victorialis

I ask indulgence for the following sidebar:

I think I understand what you're saying, Amit. I must make clear that in my own lexicon, neither "handbag-wielding" nor "Valkyrie" are pejoratives, as used in my earlier post; quite the contrary.
The continuing, if deeply ambivalent, admiration for Thatcher in this part of the world would argue that they are not true pejoratives in many other lexicons, either.

It is edifying today, in fact, to watch New Labour attempting to wield the handbag in the UK; and it is commented upon in precisely those terms, both here and in Europe. Thatcher got results -- which is why she will be neither forgiven nor forgotten.

End of sidebar.

Amit Misra

hinduwoman said apropos a single feature common to all kinds of hinduism:
Disagree. The Lokayata tradition denies god, soul (eternal or short-lived, both) and rebirth.
and as a practice that is non-hindu:
Careful of categories there. No religion can be false or true. Beliefs, yes, but religion no. Claiming that religions are true or false is absolutely sloppy.
Jesus says something to the effect that only those that come to Me shall be saved. The others, presumably, shall suffer for eternity. Allah tells Mohammad that unbelievers shall be punished, but that MOhammad's conduct towards an unbeliever should be to say "to you, your religion, and to me, mine." This makes Jesus and Allah c/o Mohammad hindus, doesn't it?

hinduwoman

I specifcally said that if you are speaking of Hinduism as a RELIGION ...

Lokayatas are not religious hindus, though culturally they fall within Hindu philosophical systems.

Same answer to the second question. Religions believe that the knowledge they have is true. In their terms therefore Hindus believe that ALL religions are true, i.e, valid paths to salvation.
But I do not get how Jesus and Muahmmad can be called Hindus. Jesus said only those who believed him would be saved --- not Hindu.
Muahmmad said 'to you your religion, to me my religion' when he was weak. when he became strong it was give the call to islam and kill those who refuse; all other religions are false.

hinduwoman

But you said in your earlier post that there is no such thing as Hinduism; then how can the Hindus say anything about a non-existent religion?
On the other hand if you are willing to accept 'Hindus' saying there is no such thing as Hinduism, then why not accept it when they say there is such a thing as Hinduism?

I do know something about the rise of Hitler and I also know why it cannot happen here.
In the first place there are too many conflicting interests. Germany was a homogenous country with one dominant race and religion and culture, eager for guidance and revenge. Its uniformity made it easier for sustained fanaticism. India is simply split into so many segments that is impossible for anyone to dominate. Even the RSS became split into RSS proper and VHP; and the BJP is struggling to survive by making concessions to its allies each of whom represents differing interests.
Secondly where is the charismatic leader who can unite everyone? Cannot see any candidate for the post of Fuhrer and going by the way BJP functions there probably won't be one.
Indian police and bureaucracy had always been corrupt and obedient to the ruling dispension --- that was how the British had set them up. As soon as Hindutvva as a political force loses power they will kowtow to whoever is in power.
BJP keeps on losing elections more than they are winning. They promised to be a party with a difference but they were not. Corruption, law and order problems, all has remained the same. That is why come 2004, barring some unforeseen events, there will again be a hung parliament.
You can argue that they will stage something like Hitler did with Reichstag, but what? That would take a great deal of resources and pre-planning and would be leaked.

Amit Misra

But you said that hinduism was a culture. I say that if those who prefer to call themselves hindu should come out and say that we are hindus and that hinduism is not a religion, and therefore we are actually a bunch of religious minorities. the indologists with whom your post began would then heave a sigh of relief and say, fine, hindus exist as a cultural but not religious category. it is the insistence of hindus to project a common religion that is the source of confusion. no use blaming the british. it has traditionally been the brahmin-rajput vested interest in propagating their dominance that ahs led to claims of a pan-hindu religious identity. to sum up, i accept the hindu contention that there is something called hinduism, but reject the implication that this hinduism is a religion. hinduttva, on the other hand is both a religion and a culture.
Hitler: germany was considered one country after the german unification. principalities and duchies within germany continued to harbour the same resentment against unified germany and otto von bismark that you have in tripura, nagaland, jharkhand, etc. in india. recall the famous aphorism about the states of schlesweig and holstein: "only 3 men knew the truth about the sovereignity of schleswig and holstein: one was dead, the other was mad, and third said that he had forgotten..." recall, too, the bitterness about alsace-lorraine. and, most importantly, recall that austria, hitler's 'pitrubhumi and punyabhumi' was unified with germany through the anschluss.
"races," dominant or subservient, are a biological misnomer: there is no such thing as race either, not to mention hinduism!
those you posit as "eager for guidance and revenge" were the worst collection of thugs, goons and delinquents--the lumpen element, much as the constituency of the togadias, vajpayees and advanis.
"charismatic leaders" are people who sieze the day. narendra modi, the butcher of gujarat, is one candidate. there will be others as long as apologists keep excusing "hindu" fascism as a kind of revenge against just the same kind of imagined slights as hitler was able to play upon. hinduwoman, i implore you: do not unwittingly defend the poison spread in the name of hinduism....
with reference to your not getting my point about how islamic and christian ponouncements can be construed as hinduism, never mind. just so long as you acknowledge that in order to be amenable to scholarly study, a religion must define the parameters and boundaries within which it functions. if it does not do so of its own accord, scholarship must, perforce try to dig out whether there are any such boundaries and parameters.

victorialis

Amit, there are a couple of matters left out of this comparison with the rise of naziism, specifically: (1) imposition of the sociopolitically daft Treaty of Versailles with its insupportable requirement for German reparations, and (2) the worldwide economic chaos after WWI that created especially high unemployment and inflation in Germany.

These conditions made "the imagined slights upon which hitler played so effectively" into an overmastering desire for a separate reality.

I'm not in a position to know whether these points support your analogy or not. Are there parallels here?

I hear often the word fascism being tossed around in this part of the world, usually with regard to parties of the extreme right. As used in that context, the word appears to be highly oversimplified shorthand for any undesirable unknown. Not having experienced fascism myself, I am unsure of what it connotes, although its denotation includes elements of racism and belligerent nationalism, which are less elusive concepts.

If there is no such thing as race, how can there be racism -- or fascism?

Amit Misra

Paralleling the treaty of Versailles is the Transfer of Power by the British to India and Pakistan in 1947. As to the worldwide economic chaos, do I need to commit myself further as a pinko to point out that the World Bank/IMF-led neo-liberal economy of globalised Capital and repressed Labour has led to disastrous effects on the Indian peasantry and lower-income groups?
The belligerence of the Hindu Right is hidden from no-one. They tore apart a 16th-century mosque with their bare hands (exaggeration: they had crowbars, pickaxes, ropes and a colluding government as tools) in 1992. They routinely intimidate, threaten, heckle, beat-up, assault, murder and massacre those whom they consider their enemies.

victorialis

Amit, I shall defer to your historical knowledge of the adroitness/maladroitness of the Transfer of Power; the Indian point of view on that is now the only meaningful point of view in the matter. Without having been there myself, I am unable to evaluate the comparison with naziism/fascism on that point.

I would also agree that something very like worldwide economic chaos appears to be underway at the moment. Whether this is progressive or degenerate is contentious, the picture being incomplete and economics being a rather unfortunate blend of maths and politics. What is clear is this: while panic is self-fulfilling, misapprehension needn't be. The mobility of capital can certainly destabilise. Should capital then be allowed, or even required, to stagnate? Have you an alternative model?

It's a cruelly moot point for those who have no capital, of course, and the accumulation of capital has become no easier since liberalisation has begun. But when I hear repression of labour, I have the same gut-level suspicion that I experience when I hear the word fascism.

I would agree that from an individual's perspective it becomes more difficult every year to see a difference between corporate business practice and theft; but we can say little about the repression of labour when France grinds regularly to a halt as a result of public-sector industrial action, or when UK firefighers strike with a demand for a 40% pay hike. In fact, I do not see either side of the labour/capital struggle managing to steer clear of manic short-termism; it's a complete chance medley. Both sides cry foul when they do not get everything they want in the short term.

Nobody gets everything they want in the short term. If the innate virtue of labour is supposed to be a given, why does it behave no better than capital?

Because when it does so, it no longer counts in the political entity of Labour.

Another of the excruciating ironies of our times: it is considered unsophisticated not to be afraid of the unknown. Inevitably mysterious to most of us are the IMF and the World Bank. What on earth do they do? Why do they do it? I know I wouldn't want the job of arch-interventionist in the global monetary system. All that study, and then no matter what course of action is chosen, someone, somewhere, will scream. Yet if there were not such an authority, someone would call for its creation, maybe more so now than ever before.

Money is neither objective nor simple. If it were, one currency would suffice on the planet and there would be no controversy in accounting. Money's thoroughgoing subjectivity makes it very, very unsatisfactory to most of us, especially the majority (which includes me) who do not fully understand how money and markets work. It's that unfortunate intersection between maths and politics, again.

Could it be that the disastrous effects upon the Indian peasantry have something to do with protectionist agricultural policies in rich-world countries? Or perhaps with trade restrictions? The outlook for labour in India is improving; high-tech jobs are migrating there, to the teeth-gnashing dismay of high-tech workers elsewhere.

If individual workers can no longer tell what skills they would be best served acquiring, it must also be said that the corporate world does not know, either (which I do find culpable -- to no avail whatsoever). There is an equality of uncertainty. Is this not the most equitable situation, given the inevitabillity of uncertainty?

If neoliberal economics could enforce upon individual economies the adoption of free trading practices, it would be illiberal. This reflects upon the big players, who are being hypocritical (as well as insular and short-termist), more than it reflects upon the value of liberalisation. Trade restrictions read like domestic security, which makes them also read like responsible policy. Liberalisation realises optimum benefit only from the active participation of those who least want to engage in it, ie, those who benefit directly from protectionism. This is a human failure, not a neoliberal failure. Destructive self-interest is not restricted to capital; labour engages in it too.

The violence of the Hindu right, to which you allude, is belligerent indeed. Do you identify those examples as belligerent nationalism? They aren't outward-looking, nor are they new; such activity appears to be a shrewd attempt, with an eye to the presence of mass-communication opportunities, to hijack the cultural ethos of Hinduism for near-term local political purposes.

Bizarre, though, to see violence being linked with pluralist tolerance. No thoughtful observer is fooled. It is a nonsense of dialectics.

Having opined decisively upon what is none of my business, I look forward to our conversation continuing.

And to drag this free-trade diatribe back onto the topic: it might be the blurring of categories that is creating all this unrest and multiplying the uncertainty.

Amit Misra

Well, well, well. Where do I begin? Let's belabour the connection between Versailles/Germany and Indian-Pakistani independence a little more. Versailles was reviled by Hitler et alia as an instrument for the humiliation of the Germans (as, in many senses, it was). The partition of India has similarly been portrayed as a vindictive act carried out by the British at the instigation of Jinnah of the Muslim League and through the acquiescence of Gandhi and Nehru, in order to humiliate hindus. No prizes for guessing who puts this particular twist on the interpretation of an unfortunate epsode in history. I don't however, agree that the Indian take on the events of 1947 is the only "meaningful point of view now." On the contrary, we need a healthy dose of irreverence for our then leaders from the British side of the fence.
You suggested earlier, using Zaehner's (haven't heard of him) analysis of Gandhi as a hindu reformer, that Gandhi did have some fix on 'true hinduism.' Much as I admire MK Gandhi for his political acumen and humanism, I must disagree with Zaehner. It was always Gandhi who was fighting a losing battle against the orthodoxy on the one hand and modern thought on the other. Nehru is quite an apt symbol of modernity in contention with Gandhi-- the two could disagree strongly but amicably. The hindu Right, demonstrating its Fascist nature disagreed with him the way fascisti do: they shot him dead.
Got to rush now. more later.

victorialis

Gandhi's limitations: Zaehner (writing in the early 1960s) says Gandhi considered himself orthodox and would not oppose the Brahmins because without them, he felt the social fabric of Hinduism would collapse. Also, that Rabindranath Tagore "realized, and said so with great forthrightness, that [the use of the spinning wheel] was a purely artificial form of karma-yoga, doomed to extinction once the magical personality of the Mahatma was removed from the scene" (p.190). Incidentally, I had perceived Tagore as a poet/mystic -- yet if Zaehner is correct, Tagore's is the comment of a pragmatist.

I'm putting Zaehner forward to find out whether he knew what he was talking about, or was merely producing isolated and incestuous scholar-product.

Irreverence for the Mahatma would be a non-starter in the west now, in view of his impact upon the human rights movement. Collective nonviolence is still quite the novelty, and the very idea of a Great Soul wafts like a divine breeze through the hair of westerners. This works against rational analysis.

Agreed that Gandhi's failures and limitations must be scrutinised with equal or greater vigour. How can westerners do this in light of how little Hinduism is understood? It's bound to be uphill-going for those who are, by dint of geography, conscious that they perceive the spinning-wheel symbolically. The most open minded may well miss the fact that it was no more than a symbol in India as well -- a propitious but limited coincidence with a local reality.

More urgently: how can anyone critique MK Gandhi without the risk of ahimsa falling by the wayside? Far too easy (especially for westerners) to identify this vital idea with his "magical personality," as if he invented it and it departed along with him.

Fascism? Amit has provided a concrete component I shall use in building my connotations for fascism: the willingness to resort to political murder. "Dead" is a good reality-check; quite unambiguous. However:

Gandhi's murderer could have been, simply, a rightward loony whose action benefitted some politicos and hamstrung others. To omit this possibility from consideration is to be less than thorough. Similarly I question those who have made an industry out of revisiting the murder of John F. Kennedy. They will accept but one conclusion, are not particular about its form or provenance, and will dig for it and spin the results to fit, until everyone else goes home. And John F. Kennedy will remain dead -- which is why everyone else goes home.

Amit, although I am one post ahead of you, I hope you will return at your convenience to whatever points you did not have time for, today. I am still cogitating over the characterisation of Partition as a vindictive act, and the implication that Nehru and Gandhi would acquiesce in the humiliation of Hindus -- Gandhi's selflessness being taken a priori as a weakness instead of a strength. I begin to see your point of view much more clearly. It would not matter whether the Transfer of Power had been done well or badly; all depends on how it was received.