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Sarayu Pani

@sarayupani

4 Jan

And 18 year old and a 21 year old got together to commit a hate crime against Muslim women. They must if guilty face the full consequences of their actions but we must also talk of a few glaring societal failures that have got us here.

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First, the insistence that Hindu radicalisation is something that only happens in some faraway rural areas to “poor” or “uneducated” people. That somehow “educated” people and their casual daily bigotry is something entirely different.

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Once and for all, it’s not. Whether you pick up a stick and lynch Muslims in a village or sit at a keyboard and code to hurt Muslims in your college, you are part of the same ecosystem.

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Sarayu Pani

@sarayupani

4 Jan

https://twitter.com/quizzicalguy/status/1478290919807799296

Actually no - see the British occupation of Kenya and their dealings with the Mau Mau uprising - as brutal as the Nazis.

The farmers have used this successfully more recently - mass non violent action can have power but the numbers required for success are huge.

https://twitter.com/quizzicalguy/status/1478290919807799296

This idea that non violent resistance equals politely asking is a curiously common misapprehension - it takes widespread long standing non cooperation on a scale that makes an area impossible to govern

The way to understand Gandhi for better or for worse is to ignore everything he said and look solely at what he does - the non cooperation movement and later the salt satyagraha were organised on massive scales - they paralysed British govt systems across multiple cities.

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Read 6 tweets

Sarayu Pani

@sarayupani

4 Jan

When any young person becomes radicalised you have questions - how did it happen, did their behaviour suddenly change, who did they meet, where did they find these opinions, why did they do such a thing?

Upper class urban Hindus need to look around them and ask these questions

It may be family, friends, TV, online friends or a combination of factors but it’s a process - and we need to break down that process to understand it.

Remember that not everyone with bigotry in the family has to grow up to be bigoted - many people do overcome family prejudices and campaign against them.

But it takes an intervention and we need to start thinking of and designing those interventions

Read 4 tweets

Sarayu Pani

@sarayupani

4 Jan

Forms of Hinduism have endured for centuries in part because of its amorphous character - to identify as Hindu does not usually require rigid adherence to much - communities who eat beef in Kerala and “gau rakshaks” can (and do) both identify as Hindus.

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A part of the radicalisation agenda is anti other faiths but a part also focusses on centralising and streamlining the identity itself - central deities, central principles (anti beef) and one or two temples that are seen as more important than all others etc.

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This shedding of the amorphous identity in favour of specific commandments and tenets creates flash points and causes groups to question their sense of belonging and their initial self identification.

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Read 5 tweets

Sarayu Pani

@sarayupani

3 Jan

The one thing liberal commentators don’t seem to realise is that if demonise vocal Muslim activists, the unfounded fear generated isn’t going to push voters towards “secular” parties - it’s going to push them towards the party that first based itself on that fear - the BJP.

Apart from being morally repugnant, these false equivalences are directly contributing to the broader culture of majority radicalisation - a culture you say you stand against

Mass radicalisation is driven primarily on fear - see some of those whatsapp forwards- “they are coming to take women, to convert your kids etc etc and only we can protect you.”

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Read 5 tweets

Sarayu Pani

@sarayupani

3 Jan

I’m fortunate not to have bigots in the family - never voted BJP etc and never even voted JDS once after they began allying with the BJP - but even here many people’s opinions of say a Sharjeel Imam were influenced by what liberal writers wrote about him.

And this was sort of understandable because back then they weren’t following everything Imam said so they trusted the liberal voices to have an accurate informed opinion - it’s only after taking the effort to read his speeches with context that you realise…

But all this while people like Imam have been in jail - there is a reason for the sort of “anti-liberal” anger - they may not have jailed people themselves but they did sort convince a lot of people that jailing certain people was fine - when it absolutely wasn’t.

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