A Himalayan Blunder!

It is not that I have forgotten Kashmir after blogging this post.  Not.At.All.  It continues to preoccupy me so much that I have two different threads going on Twitter.  (One and two.)

Ten years ago--yep, in 2009--I quoted from an article:

the use of religion for political ends has substantially increased during the last few decades. Such a development has serious implications for a secular state and society. Retrieving the secular character of the public sphere is therefore imperative; otherwise its religious character is likely to impinge upon the functions of the state.

To which I added this as an example of how this affects the functions of the state: "The rabidly open anti-Muslim rhetoric of the chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, who oversaw the worst communal violence."

Here we are in 2019.  In the ten years since, mOdi not only became India's Prime Minister, but also recently won a landslide majority and secured a second term, which gave him enough political capital to revoke Kashmir's special status in the federal structure.

Soon after mOdi became the Prime Minister, when the nationalists decided to spend a fortune on a colossal statue, I wrapped up that post with:

Maybe I should simply give up on my old country and avoid the heartaches altogether.  Oh well, easier said than done!

It is easier said than done!

I wrote in a work email to a colleague who wondered if a lack of response from me was because I was in India: "I am very much here in the US, and following with a heavy heart the unfolding of events in Kashmir, and the tragic mass shootings."

It is like the line from Brokeback Mountain: "I wish I knew how to quit you."

I am not at all surprised that most of India's Hindus support this mOdi move to annex Jammu and Kashmir in one sweep.  Most of the extended family, the old school mates, and even the "worldly" former commenter at this blog, are mOdi supporters, like how many among my neighbors are tRump voters.  It is strange that I find myself in such company!

Pankaj Mishra, who wrote extensively about India's militarization of Kashmir in his younger years, connects the political dots between Brexit and this Kashmir situation (and tRump too.)  Drunk on power, they blithely smash up fragile constitutional arrangements, Mishra writes.

I wish I were still in touch with an old graduate school acquaintance, who was from Kashmir.  "G.P.".  Unless I want to forget, I suppose I never forget people and their names.  She was a couple of years ahead of me in the doctoral program.  Her brother then came to the US for his graduate schooling in engineering.  Even then--three decades ago--they talked about how they could not live and prosper in Kashmir and slowly the extended family was emigrating away from Kashmir.  Perhaps they also often utter the same line:  "I wish I knew how to quit you."

Nationalism is racism

Even back when I was a teenager, I had a hard time with an "Indian" identity.  Not because I was anti-Indian.  Quite the contrary; I have always been proud of the long and rich history of the Subcontinent, and pissed off against the British bastards who screwed us browns.

The political unit of India was where my discomfort was.  I had nothing in common with the people from, say, Nagaland or Kashmir.  I could not understand why such a political union was created.

I was at ease in my Tamil identity.  Because, I was born into it, raised in a Tamil environment, read Tamil fiction, listened to Tamil politicians, ... even as I read English fiction, watched English movies, and loved Hindi film songs.  The comfortable Tamil skin did not, therefore, mean that I would have gone to war to defend Tamil Nadu. It is not as if I would not have ditched my old passport in favor of an American one.

I have always been suspicious about cries of nationalism.  How could an accidental birth determine everything political?  Once, I remarked about the accidental birth making me a Tamil Brahmin; the remark did not go well at home ;)  When people are wrapped up with such accidental identities, well, of course people do not welcome such remarks.

Over the years, the flag-waving nationalism has gotten me quite worried.  The backdrop of the Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany always remind me that flag-waving mobs don't work out well for humanity.  Yet, here we are in the age of trump where he and his 63 million couldn't care about other nationalities.  America first!

Reading the Economist's interview with Mario Vargas Llosa was, therefore, therapeutic and encouraging.  He says there:

I believe that the great danger in our age is nationalism, it’s no longer fascism, nor communism. These ideologies have become completely outdated. But in contrast, nationalism is a defect that is always there under the surface and above all, at moments of crisis, can be very easily exploited by demagogues and power-hungry leaders. Nationalism is the great tradition of humankind; unfortunately it’s always present in history.
And so, I believe that it’s the great enemy of democracy. It’s the great enemy of freedom and a terrible source of racism. If one believes that being born into or forming part of a particular community is a privilege, then that is racism. I believe that one must fight nationalism energetically if one believes in democracy, in freedom, especially in this age of mixing and the building of great blocks.

The interview wraps up with this comment from Mario Vargas Llosa:

I think I have achieved something that I aimed for at a young age, which was to be a citizen of the world. The truth is I feel at home in France, in England and in Spain. Wherever I am, as long as I can write, I feel at home.

If only the American presidency is used to channel such lofty ideals!

Ah, yes, the Germans ...

Lufthansa being a German airline, the announcement began in German. 

I usually ignore all the pre-flight announcements because they are all the same same all over again.  It is also because of people like me ignoring those announcements that a few airlines are coming up with creative and humorous ways to grab our attention.

But, this is a German airline.  True to their reputation and caricatures, there was no humor.  All business in a stiff tone.

Except. Yes, except for one thing.

The guy announcing in German was a young black man!

Go ahead, and recall black guys in the jokes about Germans.  You can't picture any because, ahem, this is all a part of the mixing of people especially since the Wall came tumbling down.

Even Germany, whose nationalist leader of the 1930s and 1940s tried to "clean" up his society, has long shed its blood-and-soil racism.  A black German male is not really news.

Except. Yes, except that blood-and-soil racism has become mainstream here in the US!

The nationalist leader of the US openly engages in racist rhetoric, which has further emboldened the nationalists who used to be a tad cautious in publicizing their racism and hatred.

“Mixing cultures will not lead to a higher quality of life but a lower one," tweets a longtime Republican Congressman.  Yet another proud moment for 63 million voters!

I don't ever understand why people like him are so worried about mixing cultures.  For one, it produces beautiful people, like the guy that the American nationalists openly hated all through his eight years of presidency.   Or, consider the woman who is all set to marry into the British royal family.

There is only one thing I want to say at this point: Fucking 63 million voters!

I so want Scotland to break free. Jack the Union (Jack)!

I have never been to Scotland, and I doubt I will ever get there.  Despite all my longing for travel to far off places that have their own long and rich histories, that part of the world has never fascinated me enough to day dream about a Scottish lass.

I suppose there is one connection to Scotland that I can think of.  My accent.  No, not because the English I speak is as hard to understand as one spoken with the full-throated Scottish accent.  Apparently my accent is not the stereotypical Indian accent that people expect to hear.  Can't blame them when anything about me is far from stereotypical ;)  Once, at the end of a conference session, as I was exiting the room, another guy who was about my age said that my accent intrigued him.  "Obviously you are from India, but you seem to have picked up a Scottish accent too.  Did you live in Scotland for a while?"  He should know about Scottish accents--he said he was from Scotland.

So, there, that qualifies me to blog about Scotland!

I am all in support of an independent Scotland for a very simple reason.  We are so much wrapped up with the idea of globalization that we forget we are humans and we like, we love, identities.  Identities especially when there is a long and rich history of the peoples.  Economics--being materially well off--does matter to us, yes.  But, we seem to overlook that we do not live on bread alone.  There is a lot more than mere material satisfaction that makes us human.  Identity--religious, ethnic, linguistic, ... and often these are also intertwined.

Scotland is a prime example.  There are more in the queue: Basque, Catalonia, Tibet, Xinjiang, Kashmir, Balochistan, ... it is a long list.  You cannot convince them to stay put in whatever political union they are by merely offering economic arguments:

the economic arguments against independence seem not to be working — and may even be backfiring. I think I know why. Telling a Scot, “You can’t do this — if you do, terrible things will happen to you,” has been a losing negotiating strategy since time immemorial. If you went into a Glasgow pub tonight and said to the average Glaswegian, “If you down that beer, you’ll get your head kicked in,” he would react by draining his glass to the dregs and telling the barman, “Same again.”

No, it is not some crank basing it on the stereotype of a Scot who walks around drunk with whiskey.  Ok, it is a crank, but an accomplished intellectual, Niall Ferguson, who knows a thing or two about Scotland, and yet is baffled with the momentum that the "Yes" campaign has picked up:

With days remaining before the Scottish electorate votes on whether or not to remain in the United Kingdom, the result is too close to call.
Born in Glasgow, but having spent most of my life in England and America, I am rather baffled, too

Another Scotland-born author, who also now lives in the US, writes that "the idea of nationalism has also been redefined by this vote":

Foreign nationals who are resident, however, can vote. If you live in Scotland, you are taken to be part of the project that is Scotland—you are taken to be Scottish. (This is a fairly well-established idea, culturally. When I offered work to anthologies of Scottish writing as an up-and-coming author, submissions were usually sought using a form of words along the lines of “if you are Scottish by birth, residence, or choice…”) This definition of national identity—I would hope not an unfamiliar one to citizens of the great melting pot—has been echoed in Scottish parliamentary efforts to produce a country which is now perceived by immigrants as being one of the more welcoming areas of the UK—which is, admittedly, an increasingly racist entity. So a “Yes” vote isn’t a return to the SNP’s beliefs during the 1930s—the beliefs they’d like us to forget—which involved disturbing yearnings for an Aryan future. There is a tiny wild-eyed fringe of people who will vote “Yes” on a kind of racist autopilot, but they are a minority.The “No” vote largely reflects a secure type of Scottishness under a British umbrella, a fear that now is not the time to do something risky—financially or otherwise—and a lack of trust in Scotland’s available politicians. There is an ugly minority of “No” voters who are wedded to the brand of Unionism familiar to Northern Ireland—the one that’s about Empire supremacy and a feeling that rampant savages may overwhelm the white Protestant barricades at any moment. The “Yes” voters—and I would be one of them if I could vote—may detect also traces of post-Empire low self-esteem in the “No” camp.

Add me to that list of people who would love to watch the old British Empire get another kick in its ass. Er, make that "arse." ;)

Republicans have become Social Darwinist dystopians!

The best sentence I read today:

Our plutocracy now lives like the British in colonial India: in the place and ruling it, but not of it. 

Well, this might be an insult to the British Empire, of which I am no fan either!  Even if it was from their own selfish interests, the British at least did a few good things--even something like this "anicut" in a remote small town in Tamil Nadu.

Anyway, that sentence is from this essay in The American Conservative (ht) that makes a wonderful point that "our financial elites are the new secessionists."

Being in the country but not of it is what gives the contemporary American super-rich their quality of being abstracted and clueless. Perhaps that explains why Mitt Romney’s regular-guy anecdotes always seem a bit strained.

Keep in mind that this is a criticism not coming from The Nation or Harper's, but from a conservative publication.  But then, this is a truly intellectually conservative publication, which has become a minority among the atrocious likes of the Weekly Standard.

The essay is only warming up.  The author, Mike Lofgren, "served 16 years on the Republican staff of the House and Senate Budget Committees" and yet the following sentences of his might easily be mistaken as something that was authored by the late Alexander Cockburn:

In both world wars, even a Harvard man or a New York socialite might know the weight of an army pack. Now the military is for suckers from the laboring classes whose subprime mortgages you just sliced into CDOs and sold to gullible investors in order to buy your second Bentley or rustle up the cash to get Rod Stewart to perform at your birthday party. The sentiment among the super-rich towards the rest of America is often one of contempt rather than noblesse.

The kind of true conservatism echoes Ralph Nader's characterization of the two parties as tweedledum-and-tweedledee:

After the biggest financial meltdown in 80 years and a consequent long, steep drop in the American standard of living, who is the nominee for one of the only two parties allowed to be competitive in American politics? None other than Mitt Romney, the man who says corporations are people. Opposing him will be the incumbent president, who will raise up to a billion dollars to compete. Much of that loot will come from the same corporations, hedge-fund managers, merger-and-acquisition specialists, and leveraged-buyout artists the president will denounce in pro forma fashion. ...
the rich, rather than having the modesty to temper their demands, this time have made the calculated bet that they are politically invulnerable—Wall Street moguls angrily and successfully rejected executive-compensation limits even for banks that had been bailed out by taxpayer funds. And what I saw in Congress after the 2008 crash confirms what economist Simon Johnson has said: that Wall Street, and behind it the commanding heights of power that control Wall Street, has seized the policy-making apparatus in Washington. Both parties are in thrall to what our great-grandparents would have called the Money Power. One party is furtive and hypocritical in its money chase; the other enthusiastically embraces it as the embodiment of the American Way.

I am getting way more depressed and way more pissed off the more I think about all these.  What an awful state of affairs :(

Conservatives need to think about the world they want: do they really desire a social Darwinist dystopia?

But then, can Lofgren get, for instance, Grover "bathtub"  Norquist to read this essay in the first place, and then make Norquist think about all these?

What if Christopher Lasch came closer to the truth in The Revolt of the Elites, wherein he wrote, “In our time, the chief threat seems to come from those at the top of the social hierarchy, not the masses”? Lasch held that the elites—by which he meant not just the super-wealthy but also their managerial coat holders and professional apologists—were undermining the country’s promise as a constitutional republic with their prehensile greed, their asocial cultural values, and their absence of civic responsibility.
Lasch wrote that in 1995. Now, almost two decades later, the super-rich have achieved escape velocity from the gravitational pull of the very society they rule over. They have seceded from America.

For a few years now, I have been remarking in appropriate contexts in my classes something I picked up from Joseph Stiglitz (I think it was him.)  And that is: the rich--I mean the real people and not the "corporations people"--live transnational lives, sometimes literally with more than one passport.  On the other hand, the middle and lower income classes are geographically tied down and their sense of nationalism has no effect on the transnationalism of the rich.  To some extent, Mike Lofgren is a tad late to this bottom-line.  That can only mean only one thing: we are way screwed than how much I thought we were!

The situation is so Category-5 that perhaps Mitt Romney's father, George Romney, would have fled from the GOP!