An aggressive drive towards neo-liberal economic reforms alongside consolidation of the Bharatiya Janata Party's political constituency with the spread of hegemonic Hindutva through sociocultural channels is on the cards. From 2014 epw.in/journal/2014/3…
India has never been the democracy as it is made out to be. It has been a pure plutocracy. But for dalits, it is worse; it has been a veritable rule of demons - a demonocracy. epw.in/journal/2014/2…
If anything the book& the poem you listed - details the invasion and conquest of the Madurai Sultanate by the Vijayanagara empire and the temple chronicles also speak of board time period of various invasions. To weaponize the “sultanate” now is just dog whistle.
To retell history through communalized goes to the heart of politics seeking to manipulate, manufacture and mobilise public support to consolidate the power of the majority.
Revisionist history strategically demands for revenge as a form of justice to right historical wrongs committed under non-Hindu rulers.
A friend just sent the petition being circulated by Hindu students against Prof @AudreyTruschke. Am not sharing that. What insufferable, ill-informed toxic fragility is this? If scholarship threaten your safety, and your religion. Perhaps time to rethink what those values are.
I want to take this moment to share Prof @KanitkarT ‘s talk
It’s a good indication of where we are as a society and a community. We have lost any capacity for robust interrogation or rational thought.
Also adding a thread by @quizzicalguy where you debunks the claim of Hindu genocide the students have listed as proof of “bigotry” against them!
A year since the #Delhipogrom sharing a thread of all the important essays, and reports published by @project_polis
Deadly violence in India’s capital.. hasn’t ended with the anti-Muslim pogrom that it was. It continues in the politics of being termed a riot, an old tactic of flattening the gigantic power inequality between the country’s Hindus & Muslims @IrfanHindustan bit.ly/2ZIZmfO
When the state regulates humor: a look back at history, we realize that dystopias are not imagined futures on the verge of realization. But the record of what has been, what needs to be excavated and remembered.
Below a thread on how the Third Reich “regulated” humor.
In 1934, the Nazi state passed a “Law Against Treacherous Attacks on the State and Party and for the Protection of the Party Uniform,” — “which made laughing and telling jokes about the regime a capital offense.”
It remade the Gleichschaltung (Synchronization) regulations, “which, among other things, brought popular forms of entertainment and humor under the control of the Ministry of Propaganda and People’s Enlightenment.”
Thread: Munawar Faruqi (@munawar0018) a stand-up comedian who was performing in Indore has been arrested, denied bail, and remanded to judicial custody for the crime of committed comedy.
BJP MLA @GaurMalini 's son Eklavya Singh Gaur, who was at the show, "roughed up" Munawar, stopped the show and filled the complaint that got Munawar and four other arrested others -- Edwin Anthony, Prakhar Vyas, Priyam Vyas, and Nalin Yadav arrested.
Gaur, who is also the convener of local outfit Hind Rakshak Sangathan. There is very little information about Gaur or the organization online.