A look at Hindu Nationalism under Modi
August 13, 2016 11:42 AM Subscribe
The New Face of India Is the Anti-Gandhi - "The violence, insecurity, and rage of Narendra Modi." (via)
Nandy, a clinical psychologist and one of India’s best-known public intellectuals, recalled how he had interviewed Modi in the early ’90s, when he was “a nobody, a small-time RSS pracharak trying to make it as a small-time BJP functionary.” Nandy wrote, “It was a long, rambling interview, but it left me in no doubt that here was a classic, clinical case of a fascist. I never use the term ‘fascist’ as a term of abuse; to me it is a diagnostic category.” Modi, Nandy wrote:Thank you for posting this.met virtually all the criteria that psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and psychologists had set up after years of empirical work on the authoritarian personality. He had the same mix of puritanical rigidity, narrowing of emotional life, massive use of the ego defense of projection, denial, and fear of his own passions combined with fantasies of violence—all set within the matrix of clear paranoid and obsessive personality traits. I still remember the cool, measured tone in which he elaborated a theory of cosmic conspiracy against India that painted every Muslim as a suspected traitor and a potential terrorist.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 12:22 PM on August 13, 2016 [11 favorites]
Yet another in a very recent spate of anti India articles in MSM. What gives?
posted by infini at 12:37 PM on August 13, 2016
posted by infini at 12:37 PM on August 13, 2016
Pointing out Modi's faults is hardly anti-India.
posted by peacheater at 12:50 PM on August 13, 2016 [31 favorites]
posted by peacheater at 12:50 PM on August 13, 2016 [31 favorites]
Pointing out that Modi is a dangerous fuckwit is no more anti-India than pointing out that Tony Abbott is a dangerous fuckwit is anti-Australian.
It's been clear from the time of the destruction of the Babri Mosque that the BJP is fundamentally unhinged.
posted by flabdablet at 12:59 PM on August 13, 2016 [15 favorites]
It's been clear from the time of the destruction of the Babri Mosque that the BJP is fundamentally unhinged.
posted by flabdablet at 12:59 PM on August 13, 2016 [15 favorites]
It is one in a series of negative news lately, that is all. Each alone is hardly anti-India. Taken together its a dismal picture without any of the good stuff that's happening. Take the single market GST introduced - it gets rid of inter state octroi and taxes, freeing up trade and distribution within the country.
I'm not pro Modi so perhaps this is not the thread to bring this observation up. What about the next one on Kashmir?
posted by infini at 12:59 PM on August 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm not pro Modi so perhaps this is not the thread to bring this observation up. What about the next one on Kashmir?
posted by infini at 12:59 PM on August 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
Being Modi-critical is not the same as being anti-India. I am pathetically ignorant but it seems intolerance is on the rise and the BJP are the flag bearers of its boorishness.
The western view of Ghandi is not very nuanced, at least in the US where we like simple, untainted visions of mostly goodly people. We have a better view of MLK but as I understand it we include in some editing there as well. I think we on the outside marvel at the Renaissance change brought about by peaceful stubbornness and are content to leave the details be. When you're dealing with the enduring political legacy of the man, I think you may be entitled to more leniency in position than we allow in veneration of our saints. Its an inequitable metric.
The upswing in religious violence and intolerance is way more scary.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 1:03 PM on August 13, 2016 [2 favorites]
The western view of Ghandi is not very nuanced, at least in the US where we like simple, untainted visions of mostly goodly people. We have a better view of MLK but as I understand it we include in some editing there as well. I think we on the outside marvel at the Renaissance change brought about by peaceful stubbornness and are content to leave the details be. When you're dealing with the enduring political legacy of the man, I think you may be entitled to more leniency in position than we allow in veneration of our saints. Its an inequitable metric.
The upswing in religious violence and intolerance is way more scary.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 1:03 PM on August 13, 2016 [2 favorites]
I also thought the article presents a weirdly flattened-out and simplistic narrative about what is going on in India, and makes some awfully odd and universalising claims about Indians. I really dislike and fear Modi; I think the RSS is a straightforwardly fascist organisation; and Modi's current ascendancy certainly makes me worry for the long-term future of India's existing - fairly robust - civil society and legal institutions. But I felt the article made India's current problems and possibilities unrecognisably simple. I think, to take just one example, that the cultural pathologies linked to Rohit Vemula's suicide existed during the previous Congress government and didn't need Modi's election to lead to tragedy. I just can't see all the events discussed in the article purely through the lens of Congress v BJP, secular liberals v Hindutva crazies, socialists v economic nationalists. Not everything can be understood purely in terms of Modi, RSS, postcolonial nationalism and a turn away from Gandhi. (In any case, I would say the current turn is - sadly - much more away from Nehru and his passionate commitment to secular liberalism, as well as his central planning economy. But in any case that's still only one thread in the larger national story).
I also think the article just leaves out major factors behind Modi's election and his political success - in particular, the appalling state of the outgoing Congress government and its repeated failures of governance and reputation for corruption. I don't buy or recognise the implicit claim that all these events - from Modi's election to Vemula's suicide - are unified by a common pathology of modern Indians (something to do with post-colonial humiliation and nationalism). Modi won his election, as far as I can tell, mainly because of catastrophic levels of corruption and mismanagement by the Congress government and a total lack of popular confidence in Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh. I know three people who voted for Modi (my friends are an unrepresentative sample of the Indian population) - I regret their choice and I think they made a morally indefensible trade-off between risks to liberty and the hope of economic security, but they are not RSS members or in sympathy with RSS members. If Congress can pull itself together around some programme other than perpetuating a dynasty, and the BJP continues to disappoint the people who voted for it in the last election, Modi will just be another blip in the chequered history of Indian democracy. I really hope that happens. But unfortunately another Congress government - much as I hope for one - will not deliver the country from communal violence or caste-based violence or gender-based violence. That will require a lot of work, mostly region-specific and community-specific. I wish it was just all about Modi and his movement, but it isn't.
posted by Aravis76 at 2:02 PM on August 13, 2016 [31 favorites]
I also think the article just leaves out major factors behind Modi's election and his political success - in particular, the appalling state of the outgoing Congress government and its repeated failures of governance and reputation for corruption. I don't buy or recognise the implicit claim that all these events - from Modi's election to Vemula's suicide - are unified by a common pathology of modern Indians (something to do with post-colonial humiliation and nationalism). Modi won his election, as far as I can tell, mainly because of catastrophic levels of corruption and mismanagement by the Congress government and a total lack of popular confidence in Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh. I know three people who voted for Modi (my friends are an unrepresentative sample of the Indian population) - I regret their choice and I think they made a morally indefensible trade-off between risks to liberty and the hope of economic security, but they are not RSS members or in sympathy with RSS members. If Congress can pull itself together around some programme other than perpetuating a dynasty, and the BJP continues to disappoint the people who voted for it in the last election, Modi will just be another blip in the chequered history of Indian democracy. I really hope that happens. But unfortunately another Congress government - much as I hope for one - will not deliver the country from communal violence or caste-based violence or gender-based violence. That will require a lot of work, mostly region-specific and community-specific. I wish it was just all about Modi and his movement, but it isn't.
posted by Aravis76 at 2:02 PM on August 13, 2016 [31 favorites]
I asked my father why he voted for Modi and he said (dad's 78) that this was the first guy since Nehru to talk about India's development as far as he could recall. Jobs, growth, the future, change, that's the sales pitch he threw out at those who were fed up with the Gandhis. (The ruling dynasty is of a different clan/caste/community than the Mahatma, it was always a strategic marriage I feel Indira made) I mean I've very very briefly met Rahul and the guy's sweet but he's not capable of running the politics that a messy chaotic country like India requires. The hindutva stuff is just embarrassing.
posted by infini at 2:12 PM on August 13, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by infini at 2:12 PM on August 13, 2016 [4 favorites]
Yet the authoritarian personality of Modi would be without impact, without significance, if it did not resonate with the millions of authoritarian personalities among the professionalized classes in India and the diaspora, in Silicon Valley, and New Jersey, and Mumbai, and Delhi, among those who have risen so suddenly as to be suffering from vertigo, who feel liberated from all meaningful knowledge, whether from the past or the present, and who feel enslaved by their liberation.
I mean. Really? What's the basis for this analysis, and how does it help? Is it true that Modi's followers are primarily drawn from the professionalised class and that Indians who work in IT and have air conditioning feel so enslaved by this liberation that the embrace of authoritarianism is their only hope?
Modi is basically a right-wing quasi-fascist like Trump, except more competent. His core appeal is to nativists and people who accept a Hindu nationalist theory of Indian identity that is about a hundred years old. The rest of his support is from Indians who have no real interest in the Hindutva stuff but who are pragmatically (and, in my view, shamefully) willing to risk minority rights to get away from the absence of government offered by Congress. I can think about these two sets of facts as good useful explanations of how we ended up in this particular mess and possible solutions. "The Indian middle class has lost its soul because Silicon Valley and air conditioning" doesn't add anything that I can see, and it doesn't match the facts on the ground when you look at RSS membership and the real heart of RSS support. I have one family member who has gone further in that direction than I like. It's not because of Silicon Valley or feeling conflicted about air conditioning . It's plain anti-Muslim hatred and old-fashioned religious fanaticism and it can really be understood through a very similar lens to the Westboro Baptist Church or the KKK. No special narrative of Indian-destiny-pathology-postcolonialism-soul-loss required.
posted by Aravis76 at 2:23 PM on August 13, 2016 [24 favorites]
I mean. Really? What's the basis for this analysis, and how does it help? Is it true that Modi's followers are primarily drawn from the professionalised class and that Indians who work in IT and have air conditioning feel so enslaved by this liberation that the embrace of authoritarianism is their only hope?
Modi is basically a right-wing quasi-fascist like Trump, except more competent. His core appeal is to nativists and people who accept a Hindu nationalist theory of Indian identity that is about a hundred years old. The rest of his support is from Indians who have no real interest in the Hindutva stuff but who are pragmatically (and, in my view, shamefully) willing to risk minority rights to get away from the absence of government offered by Congress. I can think about these two sets of facts as good useful explanations of how we ended up in this particular mess and possible solutions. "The Indian middle class has lost its soul because Silicon Valley and air conditioning" doesn't add anything that I can see, and it doesn't match the facts on the ground when you look at RSS membership and the real heart of RSS support. I have one family member who has gone further in that direction than I like. It's not because of Silicon Valley or feeling conflicted about air conditioning . It's plain anti-Muslim hatred and old-fashioned religious fanaticism and it can really be understood through a very similar lens to the Westboro Baptist Church or the KKK. No special narrative of Indian-destiny-pathology-postcolonialism-soul-loss required.
posted by Aravis76 at 2:23 PM on August 13, 2016 [24 favorites]
Modi looks like a real kutte ka baccha, just like Trump. I hope that this worldwide epidemic of demagoguery runs its course soon.
posted by monotreme at 3:41 PM on August 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by monotreme at 3:41 PM on August 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
I hope that this worldwide epidemic of demagoguery runs its course soon.
While I agree wholeheartedly, I'm not real keen on the rather...dramatic...way demagoguery tends to "run its course."
posted by Thorzdad at 6:41 PM on August 13, 2016 [7 favorites]
While I agree wholeheartedly, I'm not real keen on the rather...dramatic...way demagoguery tends to "run its course."
posted by Thorzdad at 6:41 PM on August 13, 2016 [7 favorites]
It is one in a series of negative news lately, that is all. Each alone is hardly anti-India.
Then why the hell did you say: Yet another in a very recent spate of anti India articles in MSM?
posted by MikeKD at 6:45 PM on August 13, 2016 [6 favorites]
Then why the hell did you say: Yet another in a very recent spate of anti India articles in MSM?
posted by MikeKD at 6:45 PM on August 13, 2016 [6 favorites]
Because I responded instinctively coming into Metafilter after seeing a bunch of articles elsewhere, unprepared to set my comment up for deconstruction at the granular level.
posted by infini at 1:09 AM on August 14, 2016
posted by infini at 1:09 AM on August 14, 2016
Look, I curate economic news out of Africa for couple three hours a day, that activity conducted regularly over the past 5 years has resulted in a hypersensitive recognition of headlines that are patronizing, prejudiced, stereotypical, and basically polite put downs. Hence this exclamation on seeing a similar slant on India related headlines from Forbes saying "India's Delhi is buying votes by raising the minimum wage" (WTF) to unexpectedly seeing 2 FPPs one after the other on Metafilter (uncommon shall we say?).
posted by infini at 1:12 AM on August 14, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by infini at 1:12 AM on August 14, 2016 [2 favorites]
The Two-faced Politics of Indian-Americans:
We Indian-Americans overwhelmingly support Narendra Modi at a rate much higher than among Indians in India. We host rockstar receptions for him in arenas like Madison Square Garden in NY and SAP Center in Silicon Valley. This despite Trump and Modi being similar in so many ways. They’re both authoritarian and anti-democratic; anti-Muslim; anti-LGBT; steeped in nationalism (white/Hindu); allied with far-right groups (KKK/RSS); economically conservative; anti-labor union; thuggish (think Amit Shah); big on defense spending; and so on. Even if we concede that Trump is worse than Modi—though some will disagree—their proximities are undeniable. So why do we Indian-Americans despise Trump yet love Modi?
posted by airing nerdy laundry at 1:14 AM on August 14, 2016 [11 favorites]
We Indian-Americans overwhelmingly support Narendra Modi at a rate much higher than among Indians in India. We host rockstar receptions for him in arenas like Madison Square Garden in NY and SAP Center in Silicon Valley. This despite Trump and Modi being similar in so many ways. They’re both authoritarian and anti-democratic; anti-Muslim; anti-LGBT; steeped in nationalism (white/Hindu); allied with far-right groups (KKK/RSS); economically conservative; anti-labor union; thuggish (think Amit Shah); big on defense spending; and so on. Even if we concede that Trump is worse than Modi—though some will disagree—their proximities are undeniable. So why do we Indian-Americans despise Trump yet love Modi?
posted by airing nerdy laundry at 1:14 AM on August 14, 2016 [11 favorites]
I can deconstruct some of those headlines if you like, I do it everyday for the African related ones. "India's Delhi" really? Now India is some faraway little known nation that you might not know which Delhi or where?
posted by infini at 1:16 AM on August 14, 2016
posted by infini at 1:16 AM on August 14, 2016
The Trump/Modi parallels are depressing me with the thought of what India might be like if anyone in power in Congress had half Hillary Clinton's intelligence, drive, and public service ethic. More broadly, things would be so much better if there was any organised powerful straightforwardly liberal force in Indian politics; all the political power seems to have fractured into extremes of left and right and caste/communal conflict. It's as if Trump's opposition in the US consisted only of Jill Stein on the one hand and the Bush family on the other.
posted by Aravis76 at 1:49 AM on August 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Aravis76 at 1:49 AM on August 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
Thanks, peacheater and others; I was reading an interview with Arundhati Roy a couple of weeks ago and as she was talking about living in India under Modi I was struck by a sense that the U.S. under Trump would be very similar (allowing for a multitude of differences).
What a world.
posted by allthinky at 6:31 AM on August 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
What a world.
posted by allthinky at 6:31 AM on August 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
Thanks all for the conversation in this thread giving context to the alarming article.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:25 AM on August 14, 2016
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:25 AM on August 14, 2016
The latest of Modi's achievements: yet another academic resignation.
posted by Aravis76 at 2:15 PM on August 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Aravis76 at 2:15 PM on August 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
As I have commented elsewhere on the Blue, those who are excited about Tulsi Gabbard should look long and hard at her championing of Modi.
posted by bardophile at 2:25 PM on August 14, 2016 [7 favorites]
posted by bardophile at 2:25 PM on August 14, 2016 [7 favorites]
World's Largest Strike? Tens of Millions in India Rise Up Against Right-Wing Economic Policies: Public sector workers across India went on strike to protest Prime Minister Modi's push for privatization and demand higher wages
posted by homunculus at 10:39 AM on September 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by homunculus at 10:39 AM on September 5, 2016 [1 favorite]
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I have watched with horror as many of my seemingly rational friends have become Modi-bhakts, filling up their Facebook walls with sycophantic stories about Modi. There are more than a few parallels to Trump supporters here, though unfortunately Modi is not quite so obviously idiotic.
posted by peacheater at 12:21 PM on August 13, 2016 [9 favorites]