The BJP suffered a comprehensive electoral defeat to the incumbent TMC in the state of West Bengal, and TMC workers are celebrating by destroying property, killing BJP (and CPI) workers, and molesting women suspected of supporting the “fascist” BJP.
No prizes for guessing the kind of headlines we’d see if the shoe were on the other foot! Indian “intellectuals” who feature prominently in western pubs have assiduously crafted an image for themselves as heroic defenders of “secular democracy”
but it takes all of ten minutes scouring Indian media to understand how fragile this image is, and how opportunistic their rhetoric can be. Indeed, you’d think that people who appear so passionate about democracy and human rights would be guided by principle,
but the mounting evidence to the contrary renders this assumption untenable. Nor are they evil— evil requires intelligence. The answer here is much more banal; the average Indian intellectual is a salesman, and their customers are editorial boards. They know what sells.

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More from @vjgtweets

5 May
The Washington Herald, 1909

"The Reign of Terror in India"

"An Account of the Movement to Shake Off British Rule"

By Saint Nihal Singh
"A murder case was being tried. The prisoner, charged with culpable homicide, was an Englishman. So was the judge, the counsel for the defense, and the prosecuting attorney... the murdered man was a dark-skinned Hindoo, an employee of the English prisoner..."
"who had been engaged at $2 a month to pull, night-long, the punkah-- a big fan-- so that the Englishman could sleep in comfort, untroubled by the sweltering heat of the Indian summer."
Read 44 tweets
25 Apr
Even I’m not this cynical typically, but the lack of any public comments from Biden/Harris suggests that this is in fact an attempt to take Modi down a peg.
That this move could very well result in the deaths of Indians (compounded no doubt by the Modi govt’s failures) is a timely reminder that the path to global hegemony is not paved with kindness and charity, but w/ruthlessly calculated violence in the service of national interest
That some Indians can hardly contain their glee at the prospect of a weakened Modi is why India will remain a third rate power for the foreseeable future. An elite in a country as diverse of India will always have differences, but knowing when to circle the wagons is key.
Read 5 tweets
22 Apr
Just a reminder that the Indian gov’t is relying on The Epidemic Diseases Act of 1897 to tackle a pandemic in the year 2021
“Firstly, the most glaring omission in the Act is that the term ‘epidemic’ has not been defined in the entire Act.”

...
jurist.org/commentary/202…
“It also ignores the implementation of large vaccine drives. The concept of vaccination, while quite nascent in 1897, has assumed a platform of global importance that definitely requires a mention in the Act.”
Read 4 tweets
22 Apr
The British colonial government was optimized to protect the crown’s commercial interests in India, not to provide welfare or prosperity for Indians. In moments of crisis, the colonial edifice of the Indian state comes into particularly stark refrain.
As a related matter, this is why the BJP’s greatest policy successes thus far have not been due to an increase in state capacity, but a willingness to bypass the state completely (e.g. direct welfare delivery)
Read 4 tweets
31 Mar
Aurobindo on Bengal’s role as the fount of Indian nationalism:

“Bengal was once drunk with the wine of European civilisation and with the purely intellectual teaching that it received from the west...”
“It began to see all things, to judge all things through the imperfect instrumentality of the intellect. When it was so, Bengal became atheistic, it became a land of doubters and cynics.”
“But still in Bengal there was an element of strength. Whatever the Bengali believed...he lived what he believed.”
Read 5 tweets
29 Mar
"The study of history too can become warped. The colonized African student, whose roots in his own society are systematically starved of sustenance, is introduced to Greek and Roman history, the cradle history of modern Europe, and he is encouraged to treat this portion of the... Image
story of man together with the subsequent history of Europe as the only worthwhile portion.This history is anointed with a universalist flavoring which titillates the palate of certain African intellectuals so agreeably that they become alienated from their own immediate society"
"One of these subtle methods is to be found in the account of history. The history of Africa, as presented by European scholars, has been encumbered with malicious myths. It was even denied that we were a historical people" Image
Read 9 tweets

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