The prominent BJP leader Jaswant Singh recently published a book on the founding father of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, in which he praised Jinnah, and largely criticized Nehru and the Congress party for causing the Partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. The book, which has not been released outside of India yet, is called Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence (interesting that Singh puts “India” rather than “Pakistan” in the title).
Praising Jinnah is heresy for BJP leaders, so this week, Jaswant Singh, who has been with the party for many years and served in several Cabinet posts under Vajpayee, was formally expelled from the party.
Update: There is a long interview (PDF) with Jaswant Singh and Karan Thapar from CNN-IBN, with a transcript up at The Hindu. I would highly recommended it, if you have the time. (Thanks Al Beruni)
Below are some excerpts from an article in Dawn [with quotes from the CNN-IBN interview] indicating the general outlines of Jaswant Singh’s perspective on Jinnah. Though Congress does come off badly in his account, which seems logical for a BJP leader, Jaswant Singh appears sincere in his desire to correct what he sees as a distortion in the popular perception of Jinnah in India. Surprisingly, he also seemingly bears no animus towards the idea of a two nations theory, or Jinnah’s use of religious loyalty for political ends:
It was historically not tenable to see Mr Jinnah as the villain of 1947, Mr Singh said. ‘It is not borne out of the facts… we need to correct it… Muslims saw that unless they had a voice in their own economic, political and social destiny they will be obliterated.’
Mr Singh said the 1946 election was a good example to show the fear held by Muslims. That year, he said: ‘Jinnah’s Muslim League wins all the Muslim seats and yet they don’t have sufficient numbers to be in office because the Congress Party has, without even a single Muslim, enough to form a government and they are outside of the government.
‘So it was realised that simply contesting elections was not enough… All of this was a search for some kind of autonomy of decision making in their own social and economy destiny.’[…]
‘He single-handedly stood against the might of the Congress Party and against the British who didn’t really like him … Gandhi himself called Jinnah a great Indian. Why don’t we recognise that? Why don’t we see (and try to understand) why he called him that?’
Mr Jinnah was as much a nationalist as any leader in India. ‘He fought the British for an independent India but also fought resolutely and relentlessly for the interest of the Muslims of India … the acme of his nationalistic achievement was the 1916 Lucknow Pact of Hindu-Muslim unity.’
Among the aspects of Mr Jinnah’s personality Mr Singh said he admired his determination and will to rise. ‘He was a self-made man. Mahatma Gandhi was the son of a Diwan. All these (people) — Nehru and others — were born to wealth and position. Jinnah created for himself a position. He carved in Bombay, a metropolitan city, a position for himself. ‘He was so poor he had to walk to work … he told one of his biographers there was always room at the top but there’s no lift. And he never sought a lift.’ (link)
(Again, a longer interview can be found here)
I am at present agnostic on the claims Jaswant Singh is making. I don’t hold any particular animus against Jinnah — and I certainly understand where he was coming from — but I also question many of his (Jinnah’s) choices in the lead-up to Partition. (One bad choice that is often mentioned by critics of Jinnah is Direct Action Day, in 1946, which led to widespread communal rioting.) If people have specific historical accounts of Jinnah they would recommend (with links, if possible), which might either support or contradict Jaswant Singh’s take, it would be helpful to see them. I am also curious to hear from readers how this fits into their understanding of Jaswant Singh: what is he up to? What are the likely implications of this book and the controversy that’s followed it? In short: what is all this about?
A nice read on the controversy generated by Jaswant Singh’s book, with some competing historians’ interpretations of Jinnah’s role in the 1930s and 40s, is Soutik Biswas at the BBC. Biswas does address some of the “what is this all about?” questions.
We also had some discussions of Jinnah in the inaugural post from my short series on Ramachandra Guha’s book, “India After Gandhi.” Guha has a more critical take on Jinnah, though he distributes the blame for Partition amongst the three main players, including the Congress Party, Jinnah and the Muslim League, and the British.
For another take (more sympathetic to Jinnah than Guha), readers might be interested in reading some or all of Ayesh Jalal’s influential first book on Jinnah, “The Sole Spokesman.” The book is online for free at Google Books: here.
Ethiopia? Nepal? Cambodia? United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? Greece? Mongolia? Korea?
Madagascar? Samoa?
Well, let’s think of a Muslim techie working for a Hindu boss. And let’s say the company is losing money. Everybody is afraid of being let go. Here are some of the things going through the techie’s mind? Will my boss put my name in the black list? Is he a Hindutva supporter? Did he lose relatives in Kashmir?
If the techie is let go, here are some of the things that go through his mind. “Should I hate Hindus? Or was it a fair decision? One day I may become a manager, and then have to let people go? What should I do then?”
People in all walks of life can be thoughtful. There is nothing special about social studies.
Doesn’t count. One of the primary requirements is that the name must fit the meter of
East or West, _____ is the Besht.
Not that I understand what complex terms like cultural and civilizational identity mean when you have constant evolution and assimilation. It seems like it can be used to support any idea in the entire spectrum from “Things have never changed” to “Things were never like this when I was a young boy/girl”.
Nepal was part of Indian civilization for that time. I don’t see how you can argue for the rest of those though. Britain went from being Anglo-Saxon to Roman to Norman to whatever else. Why do you think the English language is such a tortured mess of exemptions to every rule? And aside from Korea and Nepal not one of these places has actually retained any vestige of their older cultural traditions or their religion.
“Can be used to support” doesn’t invalidate the existence of the concept. Darwinism “can be used to support” arguments for eugenics. That doesn’t mean it should.
This is not even an analogy. Your statement about Darwinism is about a scientific theory being used for moral judgments. In contrast, you are making a factual claim that cultural and civilizational identity is essentially unchanging, when many people view the same cultural and civilization identity as being subject to seismic shifts within a generation. That is a basic disagreement about the antecedent.
And English common law still has aspects of all these traditions, in fact English law is a mix of Anglo-Saxon and Norman, first and foremost.
If anything, this argues that the English language is a consequence of assimilation of concepts/ideas/words from all these cultures, much like modern Hindi borrows from Urdu, regional dialects, and English. One man’s unchanging identity is another’s drastic mutation.
98 · Dr Amonymous on August 24, 2009 04:50 PM
I
Perhaps you can start with this article ‘ Why India Is A Nation’, if you have not already seen it.
To be precise, allowance for private property restrictions is institutionalised at this point in time. In 2005, the Supreme Court overturned a Gujarat High Court decision in the Zoroastrian Co-operative Housing Society case, thereby legitimising such discrimination.
But I have not seen any data that shows that Muslims or any other group is exclusively or disproportionately impacted by this housing law as compared to other Indian communities. IMO the government should legislate that housing is a public good, but that’s another discussion.
Communal bias in building blocks
Meat Nazis
I am in a cranky mood so I’ll pass it on to you.
I am at a crossroads and I have to make certain (job-related) decisions but apparently no one can help me, no one wants the responsibility of helping me, and –get this–everyone tells me i know best. A case of guidance required, not received.
I don’t wonder about where I go after I die, whether I go anywhere at all, but all around me people insist on telling me where they will go and where I will not go. Turns out, they think, I know nothing at all. A case of guidance not required, but generously given.
To Jiddu Krishnamurti’s credit, he would have told me he knows nothing about either situation and would have asked me whether the changes/decisions/knowledge will affect or develop my ego? And if I had said, ‘yes’ he would have said ‘get rid of the ego’.
Malathi, your future doesn’t look very bright to me. Stay far away from libraries and any means of mass communication and you might get through this unscathed, though. Or get “constructive” religion.
Actually it mostly starts with the Normans. If you want to talk about England’s indigenous culture you’d need to find yourself some druids. Ah, but there aren’t any anymore.
Did I once use or imply that these things are “unchanging?” I explained what I meant in post #100. It’s not about things not changing, it’s about being able to see bits of yourself in the past. The entire concept of nationhood is based on having a common sense of history and a common future destiny.
The proper comparison of India and China is more like the EU. The idea of “Europe” or “Christendom” as they used to call it more closely parallels what Indian or Chinese civilizational identity is based on. In that sense India and China are substantially older than any other.
There really is only one religion whose doctrines are terribly preoccupied with where people go after they die, and even that is only true of a very vocal subset of all the adherents of that religion. For most people their religious views on the afterlife don’t have any kind of daily impact or immediacy. It’s about understanding the nature of the ultimate reality and answering questions about what the ‘good life’ entails. While certain posters are inclined to be glib about such things, most people would actually like to have some understanding about the metaphysics that underpin reality and what that means for how we ought to live.
Wait, you’re Desi and you don’t have family and friends and friends of family volunteering advice on where you should go and what you should do with your life? Do you just not talk to your parents that often? Because I was at a similar crossroads a couple of years ago and boy I drove myself crazy trying to escape from all the unsolicited advice.
And we’d need to talk about Harappa and Mohenjodaro. Ah, but there arent any anymore.
As I said, the claim that other countries cannot do this mostly comes from a bias in perspective. People can choose to see bits of themselves in the past, and equally people can say that modern culture is nothing like the one they were accustomed to from a few decades ago.
Eponymous, thanks for the article. Although I don’t agree with all the arguments in it, it is generally well written and a serious argument. Among its strong points are distinguishing between the state and society as they currently exist in most of the world and any possible political or social arrangement (which is something that Sudipta Kaviraj points out and is very useful to keep in mind). it also acknowledges the relative recency (‘modernity’) of ideas like a ‘nation-state’. the critique of european-derived analysis is also useful.
i think where it fails to be convincing for me on an analytical level (politically, i would disgaree with it and do think, despite the objections it raises, it does substantially ‘Other’ Muslims and Islam while essentialising to some extent Hinduism as a function of the idea of ‘India’). is that it uses textual citations as an example of ‘a nation’ (and at time hyperbolises) and thereby diminishes the diversity that existed in South Asia and the importance of understand a ‘society’ or ‘a civilisation’ as a fundamentally social thing – it can be discovered in a few textual citations though if there are enouhg of those that can be fairly compelling. this, in fact (to address yoga fire’s question) is my main objection to saying that ‘India’ has existed for thousands of years – I am not personally aware of a great deal of evidence for such a thing, nor am I sure that it would even be possible to actually answer this question. There are some things in studying societies – just as in the hard sciences – for which we have to say ‘ there is no way for us to really know’
It also conflates South Asia as a geographic and cultural area with India (and perhaps by sleight of hand with the Indian ‘nation-state’). if one were discussing, say, Pakistan+North India+Bangladesh that would make sense to me as a common cultural area rather than simply discussing ‘India’. Of coures, you could call that common cultural area ‘india’, but why would you? Who did? How many? What about the other identities that people had – which ones were central? Which goes back to the point about evidence.
So it doesn’t answer for me the objection it attempts to:
And it also doesn’t answer for me the obejction:
by which i think it means – this cultural or civilizational thing that’s being called india was fairly unified, rather than being divied up into a variety of social and poltiical and cultural groupings. I can sort of see a geographic argument for that, but then is Kashmir part of South Asia or Central Asia? If Southeast Asia was part of the flows of trade and commerce and cultural exchange, why isn’t it now – and if it was then, was it part of ‘India’? What role do the interactions that different parts and cities and other things in ‘India’ have with other parts of the world like central asia or the Arabian peninsula have in this explanation? it seems overly convenient to me to say that there was ONE civilisational entity and that it can only be described in one way – rather than that there were a lot of overlapping forms so that at times there may have been one grouping whereas at other times there may have been another- though again, it’s very hard to know any of this.
But it does do an admirable job of skewering the pretensions of European knowledge – the idea that Rome or Greece were ‘European’ or ‘Western’ as opposed to mediterranean is just one of several farces perpetrated upon us. I am just very convinced that we need to not even go part of the way towards doing the same, and I think saying with conviction that there was a unified, social (and at times hinted at political) entity which spanned the entirety of the subcontinent doesn’t pass my bar for evidence. It could be that I just need to read more, or that more work needs to be done to establish these kidns of facts, or I am overly skeptical, but it takes all kinds, and I am one of them.
Yes, but your original argument was that people who undertake academic work CAN’T be thoguhtful about personal identity issues. I said as much as what you’re saying here above – though I think your imaginary Muslim person is a bit unrealistic – I suppose he/she could exist, but then, it might be easier to talk to real Muslim techies (and others) who have lost their jobs and ask them what they actually thought 😉 And therein lies the point of academia – it’s basic premise is – don’t make shit up.
And therein lies the rub. Because you don’t actually have to have a common history to have a common sense of history. Moreover, the collective idea of the history of the nation might be partly true, a skewed version of what was true, or totally new- and which one probably says more about the ideology of the present than anything in the past. So ‘India’ could be wholly constructed, and people could still have a common sense of its history as continuous and ancient- and the Soviet Union’s and the United States’s state ideology could have been constructed to include some aspect of newness, but in each case, there were continuities and quite long running things going on as well.
No, my original reaction was to this comment
Why stereotype techies negatively? Why stereotype social science positively?
Okay fair enough – it wasn’t about academics but about the academic process. I still think it’s incorrect.
Agreed, sort of – it shouldn’t be about positive or negative but about accurately describing what people do and how they’re shaped by the different kinds of work and other activities they engage in. In any case, I agree with your general point that people can have real world experiences that help them confront their own experiences in life. My only point was that you can do this through an academic process as well – all while learning – or trying to learn – about OTHER people’s as well. It never works out perfectly, but it’s helpful. You can do this outside of academic work too – like i said, there are many many many activities that can leave you better tuned in to specific circumstances than academics work is – or at least will have a different and more interesting and useful vantage point for specific purposes. I’m just saying there’s nothin wrong with learning – whether inside or outside school – and that the core values of learning have to involve understanding that you’re part of a group of people that is learning and there’s never a perfect answer, but there is a striving towarsd trying to get a better answer.
I don’t see that thing about (all) social sciences people being more accepting of difference at all. The haste with which labels like ‘Hindutva’ get bandied about belies the claim. Techies are as likely to listen to opposing points of view without demonising them as anyone else.
This ‘techie’/’social science’ divide is a case in point. 😉
My internet has been down for a few days so I haven’t been able to respond to the comments. I did not mean to stereotype all techies, but I do believe that a narrow technical education does not help to overcome familial and cultural prejudices. I can give you countless examples of people who are very well-educated doctors, engineers, IT specialists, who become completely dogmatic about “Islam” or “Pakistan” without being able to understand that there are other equally rational perspectives out there. I’m sure many of you know the same kind of people in India who are rigid about their own views on religion or politics (the Hindutva types come to mind).
It has been my experience that people who have studied social sciences and liberal arts, whether or not that is their actual profession, are generally more tolerant because they have learned, as part of their education, that societal issues are not like equations and there multiple rational perspectives, depending on one’s reading of the facts. For example, in AP World History, we actually had to systematically evaluate bias and ask ourselves questions such as “Who is writing this?” “Where does he or she come from?”. To bring in a South Asian example, if the history of the Kashmir conflict is told by a Pandit it can be substantially different from the history as recounted by a Muslim from the Valley. Neither is wrong, they just focus on different incidents. It is the job of the non-partisan social scientist/historian to look at both sides of the conflict and incorporate them into the narrative. People who don’t have this analytical training tend to just focus on their own side of the story while demonizing the other.
It does not happen in practice. History textbooks in India do read like an action movie with clearly-defined good guys and bad guys. Akbar good guy; Aurangazeb bad guy. Gandhi good guy; Jinnah bad guy.
History textbooks in India present the notion that secularism is a good ideology, and two-nation theory is a bad ideology. They do not adopt a neutral stance between the two ideologies.
In various posts, you have written that secularism is good. Now, if you are commissioned to write a history textbook of India, will you portray the two-nation theory in a neutral manner? Will Kabir, the textbook author, be more neutral than Kabir the SM poster?
I think it would be the duty of Kabir the textbook author to be more neutral than Kabir the SM poster. As a commenter I am just expressing my own views, but as someone responsible for educating young people, I would have other considerations, chief among them to teach the skills of historical analysis. I think history textbooks should lay out the facts and should clearly delineate different points of view. For example: the League thought this, the Congress argued that, without making value judgements. Of course I agree with you that subjects like history or social studies are too often used as tools of indoctrination or propoganda. This is one of the criticisms that hard science types or “techies” have of social scientists. It’s also why it’s important to read multiple sources on historical issues and thus get not just the “Indian” or the “Pakistani” views.
Techies in India have a low opinion of social scientists because
— The social scientists usually come from the bottom of the class.*1Techies often did better in high school in the soft subjects than the social scientists who went on to specialize in them. — The standard of Social Sciences in India is disgraceful. Textbooks are full of mistakes and propaganda. Journalists are unethical, incompetent crooks and most research is regurgitated or stolen or both – sycophancy is endemic in India, but it is slightly less in the fields techies go into
(*1 Things have changed recently with an explosion in opportunities, but this still seems to be the norm. Here are the cut-off marks in Mumbai, which probably has the best opportunities for arts graduates in India: http://blogs.mybandra.com/2009/07/15/fyjc-admission-cutoffs-marks-2009-cutoff-marks-of-the-top-colleges-in-mumbai/ The only college where they are even comparable is Xaviers which has the best arts program, but only a decent science program. And even in Xavier’s the difference used to be much more in the early nineties)
social science = study and industry textbook writing in India = politicised political activity / educational activity journalism = producing material for publication for the purpose of informing ‘a public’
I’m oversimplifying here, but I just wanted to point out that the same way that you wouldn’t mix up a computer scientist, an IT policy bureaucrat and a daily newspaper journalist on an IT beat, it would be good to keep straight that producing ‘knowledge’ for public consumption is a broad range of activities and that concrete social science work is one of those activities. It can be done well or poorly, but the three things that you have lumped together here are not the same.
Which a social science /cultural studies perspective on analysing how ‘knowledge’ is created helps one grasp 😛
There’s no such thing as ‘anyone else’. Meaning that everyone, in whatever field they are in, is guided by certain values and shaped in certain ways by their training – in the worst case people tend to get turned into hammers that look for nails. The benefit of studying (whether in academia or outside) is that it ideally helps you at least analytically describe the nail a little better than if you just decided that you were right that everything is a nail.
That doesn’t say anything about techies – just about the values that kabir is talking about are more possible to pursue in industries that are a bit more distant from the profit motive or intense politics than the ones that are more closely tied to it (e.g. when i was doing my masters and when i was working as a journalist i did similar kinds of things, but i had a lot more free reign to work towarsd ‘the truth’ in the educational part than in writing for an editor in a company in an industry where the company is trying to make money.)
It doesn’t mean that academia isn’t an industry or that it doesn’t have its own biases and problems – just that there is (more frequently and in more ways) more space to point them out as a laborer in that field than in some other professional fields. In the same way that a doctor is going to be fairly honest about doctoring but still have some biases, and a techie is going to be fairly honest with themselves about whether their spellcheck works or it doesn’t but still face professional pressures and having industry-conditioned biases- a social scientist is going to be more hoenst about describing the social world – or will at least, have more of an opportunity to and will be pushed towards that guideline – particularly if they have a politics that calls for that.
anyway, i would recommend thomas kuhn’s the structure of scientific revolutions or abdolkarim sorouhs’s reason, freedom and democracy in islam, but it seems like assessing these things through ideas and study is not that popular here.
Next on Sepia: Which is stronger: rock or paper?
Maybe that’s because social scientists aren’t given enough sway over the content of textbooks 😉
Oh. Not more accurate but unuseful one-liners that disrupt important conversations that need to happen? 🙂
The next time a history textbook-rewriting controversy comes along, on the lines of saffronization of history or the California history textbook controversy, will you take such a stand? At that time, will you testify that both sides are talking nonsense, since textbooks are bunk anyway?
There’s no such thing as ‘anyone else’.
Statements such as this create a low opinion about social scientists.
Also unnecessarily long articles defending indefensible prejudices. 🙂
I’m sorry but this is a load of hooey, and I say this as someone who has to do a lot of social science research himself, albeit in the private/non-profit sector rather than in academia. There is a prevalent lack of objective standards in most social science research and a level of fixation on minutiae that guarantees that there is very little interdisciplinary study. This further ensures that most work leans towards coining new jargon, coming up with cute new phrases, and developing increasingly arcane and esoteric ways to show off how smart we are rather than actually saying something useful.
I daresay I have more to learn about the human condition from a classicist or a philosopher than most of what passes for sociology.
Start here for a primer. Matt Briggs kindly provides us with a summary. Both of these men being statisticians do a thorough job of exposing some of the faulty logic behind what goes unquestioned in ivory towers and they elucidate upon the statistical innumeracy that causes these misunderstandings.
So…. rock?
It would be nice if the curricula even went so far as to do analysis. Most history lessons in India are essentially rote memorization of names and dates. Thus, Indian kids can structure a timeline like nobody’s business, but ask them why any of it matters and you’ll get a blank stare.
Looks like the discussion has moved on to…the usual topics 🙂
I can only speak about the Indian situation with respect to sciences and social studies.
It is a fact universally acknowledged in India that most of the university social science departments are dominated by leftist or center-left people.Though a merit student, I did my BA by choice and used to be part of AISF (All India Students Federation, student wing of CPI) for a while.In my town, the AISF used to meet weekly at a place called Ho Chi Minh Bhavan.When I attended my first meeting, I was surprised to see several of my college lecturers present there.What I remember from those interactions is the emphasis on how we need to increase the presence in academia, and journalism. (It is a different matter that I got out of AISF after 9 months).
When I did my MA (English)at a central university in India, the place was completely dominated by the left and ultra-left types, right from the professors to the Ph.D students.It was easier to get Ph.D admission if your ideology matches with that of the dominating faction in the department.The profs can also help you out in other ways (assigning you to a survey project with good funding, referral to a US univ etc.)
When I joined a newspaper and started mingling with English and vernacular journos, I realized how pervasive left sympathisers were in the Indian media.I once covered a national level CPM meeting, and in one of my despatches referred to them as ‘Reds’.The editor was offended because he thought ‘Reds’ was slightly derogatory and colloquial.My initial job was to receive reports from journos in the field (called stringers), select the more important ones, and translate them from Telugu to English in time for the first edition.I was surprised at the quantity of reports that referred to activities by CPM or CPI workers or leaders.On the state page, if I carried two big items on Congress or TDP (the main opposition), the senior editor used to ask me to balance it by carrying some items on what the Left leaders uttered (even though the popularity of the left parties was much less than the main parties, the news editors ensured equal coverage for them, and I found it a bit biased).
I left the media and joined the IT industry later.While mingling with the ‘techies’, I learnt that most of them had forgotten the high school history and civics they’d studied.Very few knew things like Vasco Da Gama reaching Calicut, the Panipat wars, the years of first world war and so on, leave alone an appreciation of historical events.
In recent years, the awareness among techies about history, geo-politics etc has increased, but it (the awareness) is primarily created by TV anchors such as Rajdeep Sardesai, Prannoy Roy, Vinod Dua etc.The rise of the BJP and the role played by NRI /foreign returned techies and bloggers (who are generally much more right wing than the average Indian techie, in my observation)has addressed the media imbalance a bit, though the mainstream media and academia are still dominated by the left.
The advantage of a techie turned right/left wing blogger/amateur journalist is that, in general, they seem to be clearer in communication and use fact-based arguments. Social science ‘scholars’ and ‘professors’ tend to use long winded sentences, question ‘facts’ ( techies get bewildered when facts are questioned !) and typically create so many nuances about any event or situation that techie crowd would skip reading those long sentences with too many adjectives.
To address Kabir’s point, yes, social science and humanities education is a must for every individual.It helps in making better sense of our world.But it can be obtained through self-study and discussions with peers.However, a social science scholar who uses his/her facility with language to confuse things and disregard facts will find it hard to get the true respect for the ideas being offered.
In India today, social sciences and humanities is taking the backseat to technology and finance.Text books are still written, edited and approved by left-oriented academics, but one can see a slow change towards balance.Indian history needs to be rewritten because the current authorised one is by a left-nationalist (Bipin Chandra et al) clique and they are not allowing any differing narratives to be even offered to the students.
Thanks Kumar ji for that comment, your experiences are very interesting and contain valuable insights.
My main point just simply that social science and humanities education are necessary in order individuals to get some understanding of societal phenomena instead of just relying on whatever the family or religion tells them. I didn’t mean to denigrate “techies” at all. I agree with you that social science academics tend to use long sentences and too many nuances that sometimes turn the layperson off (But isn’t this true of academics in most fields?)
I also agree that there needs to be a balance in the teaching of history. Primarily what should be taught is the ability to take evidence and come to one’s own conclusions. History lessons are not meant to indoctrinate kids into state ideology, though they are often used for this purpose.
As an aside, I would say that academia tends to be dominated by left of center individuals, and this is not a uniquely Indian issue:)
Thanks, Kabir. I am glad we found a few points where we agree with each other.
Yes, I am aware that academia in US/UK is also dominated by the left, but the US media seems to have representation from across the spectrum.On any event of importance, one can find views ranging from far right to far left. A ‘liberal right’ is slowly taking shape in India, though most of the time they get pigeonholed by the mainstream (Left) as Hindutva fundamentalist 🙂
The politics of the UPA govt in India offers an interesting case study.The UPA govt talks about the ‘aam admi’, inclusive growth etc, using largely center left phraseology.But in practice, esp. with respect to the economy, they have been more center right than the NDA govt 🙂
<
blockquote>So…. rock?
Scissors, in the avatar of rock.
I agree with these criticisms of academia and academic culture. I also agree that ordinary people and self-study is an important part of life. What I was pointing to was the greater sense of possibility in the activity of learning and critical thoguht and consulting sources and engaging in ethnographies and holding some leavel of adherence to accuracy rather than the demands of your boss or what you were preconditioned to believe before your ideas are broken down, complicated, etc. My point is not to juxtapose people who are paid to work in these fields from people who don’t (if anything, I rely on the outsidfer intellectual as a hero – Jane Jacobs, Antonio Gramsci, Emma Goldman, etc.).
My main point was simply to say that a) the distance from the market in ordinary life provides the opportunities for many academics to be able to engage in heterodox studies and independent thinking that can but does not necessarily run contrary to the influences on them and their fields; b) the values of the fields, while still biased in a variety of ways because of funding structures and whatnot, still have an aspect of establishing accuracy in the same sense that a coder will have to produce code that works. The first can be established in any field (and is – comptuer scientists in academia have more leeway to study a variety of interesting things than others) but the second is more difficult – as someone who worked as a journalist and was also a postgrad student, the reason I gravtiated towards study was because of the greater amount of freedom it gave. I’ve also done knowledge production in a variety of other contexts in non academia (NGOs, trade unions, etc.) and there is a more political and less personal process to your work and it is more tied to oragnisational needs. This is not intrinsically bad, but more often than not tends to be because it depends on the values of the organisation/industry.
The major flaw with social sciences is that in the absence of strong incentive for ‘social science that is accurate’ you end up getting too much leeway to go into exactly the kidns of things you point to and worse. Moreover, this varies from field to field and even within that frmo person to person. For example, I think economics – esp in the U.S. – is a particularly egregious example of imposing and reflecting an ideological vision of the world through academic work. For example, I believe that historians of South Asia and really anyone who is willing to ensure their theory and ideas are reliant on empirical evidence (archives, ethnographic studies, etc.) these days tend to have more vigorous and useful debates than, say, political scientists (and I say this as someone who focused a lot on Politics). This is not an indictment of the individuals in those fields, but simply a call for actually studying the fields themselves from a social science and cultural studies vantage point. There needs to be more understanding and action on this, and that applies in knowledge production at every level, from newspapers to television to professors.
However, with all that said – the reason I didn’t get into it in depth before is the same reasno that biologists (and philosophers of science) might not get into a discussion of the nuances of theory and the ways that paradigms work in science with a creationist who argues that intelligent design and evolution are both ‘theories’ and therefoer they are equally valid. There are some basic poitns to be made first – like – there is a use and a need for study of society and culture, reading, learning, and most of all a greater emphasis on what is actually out there than what is in your head to begin with – in all fields, including social science itself.
This is especially on an issue that is within the framework of communal dissension in South Asia – the means by which people in power can use all of us and pit us against each other are too easy within that communal framework and so at minimum taking a step outside of it to really ask questions and find mentors and peers who will really ask questions is really worthwhile.
I’m sorry to be so long winded, but I do hope to become a studier someday and have the autism and lack of communication skills that can come with or is exacerbated by social science academic training 😀
In my private capacity – of course. From a purely historical vantage point, the problem with the California textbook controversy was not that the original reading was good, but that the alternative reading made it even more inaccurate in most cases. From my political vantage point, I agree with the assertions of Friends of South Asia and the academics that wrote in that they were not only largely baseless, but in many isntances designed to push forward a particular politicised interpretation of HInduism in the interests of a broader political agenda. That’s the whole point of studying and holding up truth as a value – so that you can make these kinds of assertions with some confidence and accuracy and back them up (which leads you to be able to make the kinds of assertions that many academic critics – including many South Asia academics – made of the HEF’s claims). And you can distinguish – at least to some extent – what you are saying because you have a ‘studier’s’ hat on (i.e. describing the world) and what you are saying with an activist or political hat on (i.e. engaging in the world.) Not everyone does this, and of course I fail at it too because like everyone, people interested in studying are human and prone to social conditioning and mistakes and unfairnesses, despite that we may not want to acknowledge it all the time.
However, there is a relevant descriptive AND political point here. Unlike Kabir, I have a Gandhian answer to the question of ‘neutrality’ – I think it woudl be a great idea. Unless everynoe int he world is equal and all institutions and coutnries are are equal (which is saying the same thing) there are power imablances in any argument. So then it’s not just what you say, but the way you say it, how often you say it, and what you think you’re likely to gain from saying it, and the context in which you think you’re saying it.
In this case, once I acknowledge that both readings are deeply flawed (though not necessarily equally – the same way milk can be one day bad or 7 days bad) but are also occuring in a very political context which I had no role in creating, I am basically acknowledging that I have to engage the power struggle rather than in a reasoned debate about which of various poor readings is slightly less poor, let alone what a good reading would look like. So in this case, you have the diasporic extension of the textbook wars in India, and you have to pick and the sides are laid out before you’re already involved, unless by some chance it ties to your daily life already and you actually know enough to make a point and have enough power individually or collectively to be listened to. My choice is to say that a) this export is wrong b) it’s trying to take advantage and thereby undermine an openness in the system to feedback rom groups described c) putting inaccuracies into textbooks for political purposes that are designed to bolster things i disagree with is not okay with me and d) it makes it basically impossible to engage in an actual debate iwth the textbook because the debate has been polarised and you have been pressured to ‘pick a side’ rather than assembling your own and mobilising it in the name of something greater than a narrow and rigid ideological stance.
It would be easier for those of us who are part of the Left (which is not mainstream – India is so fragmented that it is hard to say what mainstream would be but in the political and cultural elite, neoliberalism is probably the closest you can come to a mainstream political ideology) to engage with the ‘Hindu’ ‘liberal right’ if they would take as much responsibility for publicly confronting and engaging Hindu right zealots – particularly in egregious instances like in the ongoing abuse of Hinduism and power in Gujarat – as they call upon Leftists, Muslims, and others to do in other contexts. This is a basic fact – if you don’t help us distinguish in your language and in a greater reliance on facts than adherence to the tenets of the Hindu right zealots – especially those in power – it is virtually impossible for us to engage in a conversation – especially when some of those zealots will periodically interject and act in an illiberal way (e.g. trying to drown out all dissenting viewpoints, including the ‘liberal right.’
Kumar ji, from what I’ve read of Jaswant Singh, he’s definitely not what I would call a “Hindutva Fundamentalist”. In an article published in today’s DAWN he was quoted as saying that he wants to build a “constituency of peace” and he wishes Pakistan and Bangladesh well. He also believes that liberal principles should apply in South Asia though he did state that it has to be our own kind of liberalism, and not just a copy of Western liberalism. If he is an example of the liberal right you are talking about, then that is an encouraging development.
I’m still very disturbed though about the way the BJP expelled him from the party. From the analysis I read by Kuldip Nayyer (again in today’s DAWN) it was because the BJP is beholden to and can’t go against the RSS.
Most of what passes for economic discourse in this country is done not by economists, but by bankers and media types who majored in economics in college and suddenly think they know how everything works. That’s not what actual economists are talking about. They’re busy trying to find “natural experiments” to come up with cute, interesting factoids of limited import to the real world (e.g. Freakonomics.)
Vigorous, sure. But it’s only recently that a crop of people have started coming up who questioned the colonialist/Marxist dogmas of the past. And it is only within the past decade or so that legitimate historians have started doing so rather than leaving the job to political activists.
You know who was a really quotable religious figure? Jesus: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” Frankly, the fundamentalist right presents much less of an existential threat to the nation when stacked up against the Maoists, Naxalites, and separatists inspired by the left. At least the former mostly tries to stick to legitimate political engagement rather than armed insurrection.
There seems to be an inner conflict between Dr A, the non-partisan academic, and Dr A, political activist. And, during a controversy, it is the latter who wins. But the public is in a quandary as to which Dr A is speaking up, the non-partisan academic or the political activist.
Consider this hypothetical situation: Dr A, with his impressive degree from a famous college, is appointed as a museum curator. The museum has a copy of Babar’s diary (Babar of Babri Masjid). During Dr A’s tenure as museum curator, it is discovered that pages between April 2, 1528 and September 18, 1528, are missing from Babar’s diary. What should the public believe? That these pages were lost during bad weather? Or that Dr A, the political activist, ripped out the pages in question, because they contain uncomfortable statements?
Yeah, I’m a human being – I have multiple sides.
Depends on how much faith you inspire in me that a bunch of people aren’t going to be killed if they’re released to the public. Political activists have values too 😉
This analysis is bogus. Keep in mind that Nayar was a Congress MP. And Arun Shourie has gone on record asking the RSS to replace BJP leadership (Rajnath Singh) over Jaswant Singh’s explusion.
Jinnah was once secular, committed to undivided India
What ex-RSS chief Sudarshan said about Jinnah is right: Bhagwat
Ashish, I wasn’t aware that Nayyer was a Congress MP (I’m not Indian). Thanks for the new information. But he’s not saying anything different from what Kumar ji was saying above: The expulsion of JS has less to do with the book (the immediate cause) as with the power struggle between the liberal wing of the BJP and the RSS types.
Kabir,
Sorry, but I have never said there is a struggle between liberal right (examples: JS, Shourie, Yashwant, Khanduri) and the RSS.With the exception of Jaswant, all the others respect RSS a lot, and the RSS respects their views too.
The struggle is between: (a)RSS and the power brokers in BJP led by a once tall leader leader who has lost his integrity in the lust for power and (b)between the liberal right and the zealots represented by VHP,Bajrang Dal et al.
The RSS is the parent organization for some, but even non-RSS people who know it well have nothing but respect for it, though in recent years, we have seen the RSS becoming ineffectual in containing the rot in its affiliate organizations.
It disturbs me when much of the abuse against extreme Hindu right attitudes is borne entirely by the RSS.It is not a blameless org, it has its double standards (their take on Gandhian thought is an example), but the ‘manufacturing of consent’ by the left controlled media, academics, and communal socialist rhetoric has successfully created an image of RSS which is far from reality.
Forgive me if I assume you are a Pakistani origin bro, considering the Dawn references, and being unaware that Nayyar is a Congressman.So, here are a couple of factoids about RSS that you may have never read about.
-The RSS completely rejects the caste system, and internally, they encourage dalit and tribal volunteers to take up bigger roles, and support their political careers wholeheartedly.Suraj Bhan, Babulal Marandi are the names of dalit/tribal RSS volunteers who rose to high political positions.More so, the RSS has been advocating training of dalit and tribal priests and uses them as priests in temples where it has a say.I am sure you know that temple priest is a role that is the exclusive preserve of caste brahmins, and no one, even the Congress of the Left have ever suggested that people from other castes be allowed this privilege.
-Nehru,, the secularist poster boy had a lot of respect for RSS.After the sino-indian war, he invited them to participate in the republic day parade as a token of respect for their war contributions.
When you find time, please go through Deendayal Upadhyaya on integral humanism.It is the guiding philosophy of the RSS, and by implication it ought to be the guiding philosophy for the sister orgs.But in practice, especially in the last decade or so, the RSS has failed to ensure the values in BJP and VHP.
I agree with you, however, that the more important struggle is probably between the liberal right and the far right in India.The liberals are more in number and will prevail.
Dr.A,
A conversation is possible when both sides do purva paksha.
Kumar ji, sorry for unintentionally misrepresenting your views. I genuinely thought that was what you were trying to say.
Yes, I am a South Asian from Lahore, Punjab–but I don’t think of myself in narrow terms as “Pakistani” or “Indian”. I was not aware of the nuances of RSS. I am sure that it has a role to play in Indian society, but I wish they would have disawoved more strongly the pogroms committed by communal Hindutva fanatics? If I am unware of where they have done so, please point me to those sources.
Best,
Kabir
I am not familar with this term and have looked it up as a show of good faith. Do you mean to raise objections in the name of truth or do you mean studying and becoming an expert in the perspectives of the people you disagree with so much that it seems like you’re in different worlds so you can debate them?
The point I was making was much simpler – which is that if we are willing to dispense with the notion of sides and agree on a few core values – a floor for basic conduct in all contexts – it would make life easier. For example, one rule for behavior might be – do not respond to perceived provocation with disproportionate force or driven by a spirit of anger rather than self-protection or empathetic protection. Another rule for behavior might be – when such a thing occurs in your mind, speak openly about it, acknowledge its truth even internally, and don’t hide from the reality of it. Another rule for behavior might be – listen as much as you speak, speak as much as you listen.
etc etc etc.
I’m not saying I’m perfect at following the rules above or realted ones- but I am willing to try, and when soeone points out I am failing, I will try to address it. I have not found the same from the many people who have spoken in the name of Hinduism from a political Hindu right perspective in the Internet spaces I have been in in the last five years. I have come to realise that this damages not only people outside of that ‘community’, but is a way of establishing power over people within that community as well by redefining what it means to be a member of that ‘community’ and forcing people who may identify with aspects of it to ‘choose.’ It is, in other words, a power game, and it is destructive and additionalyl is conducted for destructive ends in some/many cases.
So as a Hindu, I would like an apology from other people who are speaking in my name to deny reality, to push people to choose through their actions between a very narrow and ideologically particular definition of Hinduism and simply disidentifying altogether, for marginalising or subsuming the views of people they disagree with to amass collective power, which in some/many instances has not been used in accord with the rules/guidelines of conduct I’ve described above. moreover, i wouild like this apology from others who have done it in the name of other ideologies – e.g. CPI(M), Congress, the American political elite, Islamists, the Republcian party, the Labour Party, the BNP (the Bangladeshi one and the UK one); the IMF; Alan Greenspan; and many, many others.
I have lived long enough at this point to have come to believe that these apologies are not readily forthcoming, which is why, in this context, I am asking people who politically identify with Hinduism or Indian nationalism of any kind really but are not willing to support the actions of people like Modi and Varun Gandhi or deny that they exist to take a principled stand against them – if only by simply acknowledging the things that have happened – even silently – and that there have been and continue to be massive repercussions from them. Otherwise, what content or meaning does dharma (duty) really have?
I disagree that state violence is in any meaningful sense distinct from nonstate violence as a category, which renders the choice to politically engage with the state as a more complicated issue than you make it out to be in terms of measuring the effects of violence on the people who suffer from it.
In any sense, I think it is a responsibility to call attention to such things and talk about what they can do to stop them. I think I do a somewhat okay job – for example in this thread and elsewhere, as an American-born Hindu. You can judge for yourself on other matters.