On Video.google, the BBC has itself posted a complete one-hour documentary, exposing the 19th-century British practice of Indentured Labour, through which more than 1 million Indian workers were transported all over the world -- only to be told there was no provision to return. They were effectively only slightly better off than the African slave laborers they were brought in to replace. The latter had been emancipated in 1833, when the British government decided to end slavery and the slave trade throughout the Empire.
The documentary is brought to you by... who else? The BBC!
Some of the speakers include Brij Lal, an Indo-Fijian who now teaches in Australia, and David Dabydeen, an Indo-Guyanan novelist who now teaches in Warwick, UK. I've watched about 25 minutes of it so far, and it seems to be pretty well designed -- some historical overview, but not too much. Most of the focus is on the descendents of Indian indentured laborers, who are now trying to work out the implications of their history.
Incidentally, it looks like this video can be downloaded for free to your PC -- in case you're going to be sitting in a train or an airport for an hour sometime this weekend, and wanted a little "light" entertainment. (You will also need to download Google's Video Player application.)
"Just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else." --Toni Morrison
Call For Papers -- SALA Conference 2007
[Below is the complete CFP for this December's upcoming SALA conference, to be held during just before MLA -- also in Chicago. People interested in giving a paper should contact Nivedita Majumdar or Karni Pal Bhati at the email addresses listed below.]
Social Justice in South Asian Cultural Practices
8th Annual Conference of the South Asian Literary Association
December 26-27, 2007, Chicago, IL
For its 8th annual conference, the South Asian Literature Association invites proposals (of no more than 200-300 words) on the subject: Social Justice in South Asian Cultural Practices.
South Asian cultural production, especially in the Diaspora, tends to privilege the paradigm of identity politics. While it has its uses, the politics of identity, in its analysis of both colonialism and of postcolonial realities, marginalizes issues of systemic social and economic exploitation. In this context, we believe it is important to redirect our attention to questions of social justice. How have the literatures of South Asia dealt with various issues of social justice that political activists and social reformers (both during and after the period of colonial rule) have been known to engage with? How do South Asian aesthetic practices engage with questions of the just, and the morally justifiable, whether it be in terms of affirming or contesting existing regimes of truth and reason? As a region of historically altering hegemonies and various kinds of coexisting pluralities (linguistic, religious, ethnic, etc.) how have South Asians sought to bring the just and the beautiful in accord? What sorts of ideologies of progress and change, or of anxious return to indigenous tradition, have fostered what kinds of narratives of affect in literature primarily but also in cinema, theatre and other popular forms?
Possible areas and issues for exploration:
• The rich corpus of literature engaging with struggles against both colonialism and indigenous forms of injustices during the colonial period: Apart from analysis of anti-colonial texts, this may also include inquiries into the relationship of literary discourses with various kinds of reform initiated by leaders of particular religious communities (Arya Samaj, Brahmo Samaj, the Barelvi and the Deobandi movements, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, and other modernizers in various communities) and their combined effects on new articulations of social justice.
• The Progressive Writers’ movement and the Indian Peoples’ Theatre Association (IPTA)—their reading of the anti-colonial movement, its blind spots and the socioeconomic challenges of the nascent nation. To the extent that this powerful tradition highlights class conflict, in what ways do contemporary cultural practices reflect its influence?
• One of the most exciting developments in the contemporary Indian literary scene is the emergence of a vibrant body of Dalit literature. A possible area of enquiry could be the “ideology vs. aestheticism” debate regarding this literature.
• The politics of religious identity: artistic representations of movements against communalism across South Asia.
• How do the several movements for gender justice play out in literature and the arts?
• Ethnicity has been a vexing issue in postcolonial South Asia: it’s a crucial aspect of the various insurgencies in Sri Lanka and within India, in the North-East, in Kashmir and Punjab. How has literature emerging from and about these regions engaged with the issue?
• Sexuality: The possibilities and dead-ends within this emerging field; are there certain ways in which both struggles against discrimination based on sexuality and their representations are following different trajectories compared to their western counterparts?
• How do we theorize social justice in regional, national and global terms? What problems of translation (not just linguistic ones but those of cultural translation in an uneven world) do we run into when literary representations of social justice (or the search thereof) get carried over from a local (or regional) domain to a national and transnational one?
• Social justice in post-liberalization literature and cinema: have questions of social justice been occluded in recent literature and cinema?
• South Asian cosmopolitanisms and questions of social justice: are recent cosmopolitical writers more sensitive to questions of social justice than some writers of the preceding generations (whether writing in English or in South Asian languages)? How are questions of social justice being articulated in the present age of almost instant awareness of global wrongs? Are there new dilemmas of local and global justice being articulated?
Abstracts of 200-300 words with the subject line, SALA Abstract, must be sent to both conference co-chairs by August 6, 2007.
E-mail Addresses:
Nivedita Majumdar:
Karni Pal Bhati:
Postal addresses:
Nivedita Majumdar, Department of English, John Jay College/CUNY, 1258 North Hall, 445 West 59th. Street, New York, NY 10019, U.S.A.
Karni Pal Bhati, English Department, Furman University, Greenville, SC 29613, U.S.A.
Please include your full name, institutional affiliation, title, phone
number and email address with your proposal. A panel proposal will be
considered ONLY IF it includes a detailed abstract for each paper, a
designated chair, and a short statement as to why the submissions should
be considered as a panel rather than as individual presentations.
The SALA conference will be held on December 26 and 27 in Chicago, IL,
in conjunction with the MLA convention.
SALA also publishes the refereed journal, South Asian Review (SAR). All
abstracts accepted for the conference will be published in the special
conference number of the SAR. Inquiries about SAR should be directed to
Kamal Verma at kverma+@pitt.edu.
Social Justice in South Asian Cultural Practices
8th Annual Conference of the South Asian Literary Association
December 26-27, 2007, Chicago, IL
For its 8th annual conference, the South Asian Literature Association invites proposals (of no more than 200-300 words) on the subject: Social Justice in South Asian Cultural Practices.
South Asian cultural production, especially in the Diaspora, tends to privilege the paradigm of identity politics. While it has its uses, the politics of identity, in its analysis of both colonialism and of postcolonial realities, marginalizes issues of systemic social and economic exploitation. In this context, we believe it is important to redirect our attention to questions of social justice. How have the literatures of South Asia dealt with various issues of social justice that political activists and social reformers (both during and after the period of colonial rule) have been known to engage with? How do South Asian aesthetic practices engage with questions of the just, and the morally justifiable, whether it be in terms of affirming or contesting existing regimes of truth and reason? As a region of historically altering hegemonies and various kinds of coexisting pluralities (linguistic, religious, ethnic, etc.) how have South Asians sought to bring the just and the beautiful in accord? What sorts of ideologies of progress and change, or of anxious return to indigenous tradition, have fostered what kinds of narratives of affect in literature primarily but also in cinema, theatre and other popular forms?
Possible areas and issues for exploration:
• The rich corpus of literature engaging with struggles against both colonialism and indigenous forms of injustices during the colonial period: Apart from analysis of anti-colonial texts, this may also include inquiries into the relationship of literary discourses with various kinds of reform initiated by leaders of particular religious communities (Arya Samaj, Brahmo Samaj, the Barelvi and the Deobandi movements, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, and other modernizers in various communities) and their combined effects on new articulations of social justice.
• The Progressive Writers’ movement and the Indian Peoples’ Theatre Association (IPTA)—their reading of the anti-colonial movement, its blind spots and the socioeconomic challenges of the nascent nation. To the extent that this powerful tradition highlights class conflict, in what ways do contemporary cultural practices reflect its influence?
• One of the most exciting developments in the contemporary Indian literary scene is the emergence of a vibrant body of Dalit literature. A possible area of enquiry could be the “ideology vs. aestheticism” debate regarding this literature.
• The politics of religious identity: artistic representations of movements against communalism across South Asia.
• How do the several movements for gender justice play out in literature and the arts?
• Ethnicity has been a vexing issue in postcolonial South Asia: it’s a crucial aspect of the various insurgencies in Sri Lanka and within India, in the North-East, in Kashmir and Punjab. How has literature emerging from and about these regions engaged with the issue?
• Sexuality: The possibilities and dead-ends within this emerging field; are there certain ways in which both struggles against discrimination based on sexuality and their representations are following different trajectories compared to their western counterparts?
• How do we theorize social justice in regional, national and global terms? What problems of translation (not just linguistic ones but those of cultural translation in an uneven world) do we run into when literary representations of social justice (or the search thereof) get carried over from a local (or regional) domain to a national and transnational one?
• Social justice in post-liberalization literature and cinema: have questions of social justice been occluded in recent literature and cinema?
• South Asian cosmopolitanisms and questions of social justice: are recent cosmopolitical writers more sensitive to questions of social justice than some writers of the preceding generations (whether writing in English or in South Asian languages)? How are questions of social justice being articulated in the present age of almost instant awareness of global wrongs? Are there new dilemmas of local and global justice being articulated?
Abstracts of 200-300 words with the subject line, SALA Abstract, must be sent to both conference co-chairs by August 6, 2007.
E-mail Addresses:
Nivedita Majumdar:
Karni Pal Bhati:
Postal addresses:
Nivedita Majumdar, Department of English, John Jay College/CUNY, 1258 North Hall, 445 West 59th. Street, New York, NY 10019, U.S.A.
Karni Pal Bhati, English Department, Furman University, Greenville, SC 29613, U.S.A.
Please include your full name, institutional affiliation, title, phone
number and email address with your proposal. A panel proposal will be
considered ONLY IF it includes a detailed abstract for each paper, a
designated chair, and a short statement as to why the submissions should
be considered as a panel rather than as individual presentations.
The SALA conference will be held on December 26 and 27 in Chicago, IL,
in conjunction with the MLA convention.
SALA also publishes the refereed journal, South Asian Review (SAR). All
abstracts accepted for the conference will be published in the special
conference number of the SAR. Inquiries about SAR should be directed to
Kamal Verma at kverma+@pitt.edu.
Salman Rushdie, from Outsider to "Knight Bachelor"
Salman Rushdie got knighted over the weekend: he's now Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie.
Predictably, government officials in Pakistan and Iran have come out against honouring the "blaspheming" "apostate" Rushdie. It's a brand of foaming at the mouth that we're all too familiar with at this point; in a sense, the hostile fundamentalist reaction validates the strong secularist stance that Rushdie has taken since his reemergence from Fatwa-induced semi-seclusion in 1998. (If these people are burning your effigy, you must be doing something right.)
But actually, there's another issue I wanted to mention that isn't getting talked about much in the coverage of Rushdie's knighthood, which is the fact that Rushdie wasn't always a "safe" figure for British government officials. In the early 1980s in particular, and throughout the Margaret Thatcher era, Rushdie was known mainly as a critic of the British establishment, not a member. The main issue for Rushdie then was British racism, and he did not mince words in condemning it as well as the people who tolerated it.
This morning I was briefly looking over some of Rushdie's essays from the 1980s. Some of the strongest work excoriated the policies of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and indicted the pervasiveness of "institutionalized racism" in British society. Two essays in particular stand out, "The New Empire Within Britain," and "Home Front." Both are published in Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991. (Another great essay from that collection is "Outside the Whale" -- required reading, though on a slightly different topic. And see this NYT review of the collection as a whole from 1991.)
Here is a long quote from "The New Empire Within Britain" (1982):
That was Rushdie in 1982: "British society has never been cleansed of the filth of imperialism." And it's by no means the only strong statement he makes about racism and imperialism in "The New Empire Within Britain"; he also goes after the legal system, the police, and the clearly racist quotas the British had enacted in the immigration policy to reduce the number of black and brown immigrants coming to Britain from former colonies.
If we compare Rushdie in 1982 to Rushdie today, it's clear that the man has changed quite a bit -- but it also has to be acknowledged that British society has itself been transformed, perhaps even more radically. Organizations like the National Front are nowhere near as influential as they were in the early 1980s, and a decade of the Labour Party and Tony Blair have changed the political picture for good. But more than anything, what seems different is the way racialized difference (Blacks and Asians vs. the white majority) has been displaced by the religious difference as the most contentious issue of the day. One you move the debate from race to religion, the parameters for who gets seen as an "outsider" and who becomes an "insider" look quite different.
Predictably, government officials in Pakistan and Iran have come out against honouring the "blaspheming" "apostate" Rushdie. It's a brand of foaming at the mouth that we're all too familiar with at this point; in a sense, the hostile fundamentalist reaction validates the strong secularist stance that Rushdie has taken since his reemergence from Fatwa-induced semi-seclusion in 1998. (If these people are burning your effigy, you must be doing something right.)
But actually, there's another issue I wanted to mention that isn't getting talked about much in the coverage of Rushdie's knighthood, which is the fact that Rushdie wasn't always a "safe" figure for British government officials. In the early 1980s in particular, and throughout the Margaret Thatcher era, Rushdie was known mainly as a critic of the British establishment, not a member. The main issue for Rushdie then was British racism, and he did not mince words in condemning it as well as the people who tolerated it.
This morning I was briefly looking over some of Rushdie's essays from the 1980s. Some of the strongest work excoriated the policies of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and indicted the pervasiveness of "institutionalized racism" in British society. Two essays in particular stand out, "The New Empire Within Britain," and "Home Front." Both are published in Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991. (Another great essay from that collection is "Outside the Whale" -- required reading, though on a slightly different topic. And see this NYT review of the collection as a whole from 1991.)
Here is a long quote from "The New Empire Within Britain" (1982):
[L]et me quote from Margaret Thatcher's speech at Cheltneham on the third of July, her famous victory address: 'We have learned something about ourselves, a lesson we desperately need to learn. When we started out, there were the waverers and the fainthears . . . The people who thought we could no longer do the great things which we once did . . . that we could never again be what we were. Ther were those who would not admit it . . . but--in their heart of hearts--they too had their secret fears that it was true: that Britain was no longer the nation that had built an Empire and ruled a quarter of the world. Well, they were wrong.'
There are several interesting aspects to this speech. Remember that it was made by a triumphant Prime Minister at the peak of her popuolarity; a Prime Minister who could claim with complete credibility to be speaking for an overwhelming majority of the elctorate, and who, as even her detractors must admit, has a considerable gift for assessing the national mood. Now if such a leader at such a time felt able to invoke the spirit of imperialism, it was because she knew how central that spirit is to the self-image of white Britons of all classes. I say white Britons because it's clear that Mrs Thatcher wasn't addressing the two million or so blacks, who don't feel quite like that about the Empire. So even her use of the word 'we' was an act of racial exclusion, like her other well-known speech about the fear of being 'swamped' by immigrants. With such leaders, it's not surprising that the British are slow to learn the real lessons of their past.
Let me repeat what I said at the beginning: Britain isn't Nazi Germany. The British Empire isn't the Third Reich. But in Germany, after the fall of Hitler, heroic attempts were made by many people to purify German though and the German language of the pollution of Nazism. Such acts of cleansing are occasionally necessary in every society. But British thought, British society, has never been cleansed of the filth of imperialism. It's still there, breeding lice and vermin, waiting for unscrupulous people to exploit it for their own ends. (Read the whole thing)
That was Rushdie in 1982: "British society has never been cleansed of the filth of imperialism." And it's by no means the only strong statement he makes about racism and imperialism in "The New Empire Within Britain"; he also goes after the legal system, the police, and the clearly racist quotas the British had enacted in the immigration policy to reduce the number of black and brown immigrants coming to Britain from former colonies.
If we compare Rushdie in 1982 to Rushdie today, it's clear that the man has changed quite a bit -- but it also has to be acknowledged that British society has itself been transformed, perhaps even more radically. Organizations like the National Front are nowhere near as influential as they were in the early 1980s, and a decade of the Labour Party and Tony Blair have changed the political picture for good. But more than anything, what seems different is the way racialized difference (Blacks and Asians vs. the white majority) has been displaced by the religious difference as the most contentious issue of the day. One you move the debate from race to religion, the parameters for who gets seen as an "outsider" and who becomes an "insider" look quite different.
Obama Campaign Goes the Xenophobic Route
[UPDATE: Obama has now distanced himself from this memo. See Sepia Mutiny]
Today's New York Times has a story about the Clintons' recent financial disclosures, and their decision to liquidate all their stock holdings. Fine; makes sense.
But what's really remarkable about this story is the questionable anonymous memo issued by the Obama campaign in response to the Clinton disclosures. The memo amounts to an attempt to smear Clinton as being too friendly to India, and is laced with xenophobic sentiments and insinuations. It starts with the title of the memo itself: "HILLARY CLINTON (D-PUNJAB)’S PERSONAL FINANCIAL AND POLITICAL TIES TO INDIA."
And it goes downhill from there. Obama's campaign memo (read the whole thing) accuses the Clintons of a number of things:
So now the question is, how aware was Obama personally of the contents of this "anonymous" memo? If Obama doesn't distance himself from the memo immediately, this macaca is going to be sending his moolah to "Hillary Clinton, D-Punjab."
[UPDATE: Obama has now distanced himself from this memo. See Sepia Mutiny]
Today's New York Times has a story about the Clintons' recent financial disclosures, and their decision to liquidate all their stock holdings. Fine; makes sense.
But what's really remarkable about this story is the questionable anonymous memo issued by the Obama campaign in response to the Clinton disclosures. The memo amounts to an attempt to smear Clinton as being too friendly to India, and is laced with xenophobic sentiments and insinuations. It starts with the title of the memo itself: "HILLARY CLINTON (D-PUNJAB)’S PERSONAL FINANCIAL AND POLITICAL TIES TO INDIA."
And it goes downhill from there. Obama's campaign memo (read the whole thing) accuses the Clintons of a number of things:
1) They start out by stating that the Clintons own stock in an Indian company called "Easy Bill," which is actually just a company that allows Indians to automate their bill payments. This is not a BPO type company, but a service for Indians within India, so one wonders why is this even included.
2) They then go after the Clintons for accepting speaking fees from Cisco (this is Bill) and campaign donations from Cisco employees (Hillary). Cisco may be more guilty than many software companies of dumping its U.S. based workforce in favor of cheaper Indian engineers in the early 2000s, but it's nevertheless the case that U.S. high tech job market is in pretty good shape again overall -- outsourcing hasn't created the apocalypse that was feared. This is a little bit strange: I doubt that many Americans think of Cisco as an evil outsourcer.
3) They seem to find fault with Clinton's relationship with the hotel tycoon Sant Singh Chatwal. Chatwal has organized two big fundraisers for her, netting a total of $1 million in donations. Chatwal also started "Indian Americans for Hillary 2008," which ought not to be an issue (doesn't Obama have South Asians for Obama hosted on his campaign website?). The Obama campaign's memo underlines Chatwal's various legal difficulties, general financial shadiness, and pending court cases, to make it all look like some kind of shady back-room deal. This accusation seems strange to me, since the fundraisers are completely legit, even if Chatwal himself is in trouble.
4) Finally, they quote Lou "Keep Em Out" Dobbs several times, as he mocked Hillary in 2004 for saying that "outsourcing cuts both ways" (as in, it creates some American jobs as well as sending others overseas). In fact, though her particular example of "10 new jobs in Buffalo" was a bit weak, Hillary was right about this: companies like TCS are opening up a number of U.S. offices, and more generally, the greater efficiency enabled by BPO helps keep American companies competitive on a global scale, and has, in my view, actually helped the U.S. economy. (All of Hillary's quotes about "outsourcing cutting both ways" are from the 2004 campaign season, incidentally.)
So now the question is, how aware was Obama personally of the contents of this "anonymous" memo? If Obama doesn't distance himself from the memo immediately, this macaca is going to be sending his moolah to "Hillary Clinton, D-Punjab."
[UPDATE: Obama has now distanced himself from this memo. See Sepia Mutiny]
Martha Nussbaum on India's "Clash Within"
Pankaj Mishra recently reviewed Martha Nussbaum's new book, The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future in the New York Review of Books. The review gives some tantalizing hints as to Nussbaum's arguments, but Mishra also spends a considerable amount of time rehashing his own views (rather than Nussbaum's) on the subjects of communalism and India's evolution as a free market economy.
A better introduction to Nussbaum's ideas about India can be found in a good-sized extract from the new book that appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education last month. (Also check out Ramachandra Guha's review here. And finally, there's an MP3 Podcast of Nussbaum's lecture at the University of Chicago you can download here; listen especially to Nussbaum's prefatory comments on what led her to this project.) For those who are unfamiliar with Nussbaum's interest in India, she has collaborated closely with Amartya Sen in the past, and also published a book called Women and Human Development that dealt with gender issues in India.
* * *
Nussbaum is clear from the start that the main goal of her book is to help American readers see India's communalism problems in a global context. She wants to debunk Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" thesis, and suggest Gandhi as an alternative:
What's interesting about this is the way Nussbaum -- by training a philosopher -- keeps a philosophical (rather than a political) idea at the center of her argument. She is not talking about competing political systems or the ideologies of individual political parties so much as she is trying to suggest competing ways of understanding the "self" in a world full "others."
That said, Nussbaum does get into some specific details, and outlines a version of the rise of the Hindu right starting with the arguments of Savarkar and Golwalkar, and ending in Gujarat 2002. (Some readers will agree with her version of events, some may disagree. I think she is substantially correct.)
For Nussbaum, the rhetoric of Hindutva is to a great extent a rhetoric of masculinity under threat:
I think the threatened-masculinity point is interesting, as is Nussbaum's proposed alternative. For her, the way to combat the hyper-virility of communal groups is not anti-masculinity, but an alternative conception of what it might mean to assert oneself as a man. I'm not sure the Gandhian idea of masculinity -- which has always struck me as a little weird, frankly -- is the best way to go, but this is still a provocative point.
* * *
The one point of disagreement I have with Nussbaum -- at least from the extract I linked to -- relates to whether the "clash within" is primarily a matter of Hindus/Muslim tension. As I've been watching Indian politics over the past few years, I've been struck, first, by the degree to which regional and state political considerations have come to dominate over grand ideology and national politics. Secondly, I've been struck by the continuing electoral fragmentation by caste -- the Indian political system is not simply divided on a left/right diagram, but cut into a much more fragmentary array of caste-based political parties that can form (and break) alliances with the national parties at the will their respective leaders. Nussbaum may in fact be right about the principal problem in Indian politics (i.e., her philosophy of "the clash within"), but perhaps she needs to move beyond her current exclusive focus on Hindu/Muslim conflicts.
A better introduction to Nussbaum's ideas about India can be found in a good-sized extract from the new book that appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education last month. (Also check out Ramachandra Guha's review here. And finally, there's an MP3 Podcast of Nussbaum's lecture at the University of Chicago you can download here; listen especially to Nussbaum's prefatory comments on what led her to this project.) For those who are unfamiliar with Nussbaum's interest in India, she has collaborated closely with Amartya Sen in the past, and also published a book called Women and Human Development that dealt with gender issues in India.
* * *
Nussbaum is clear from the start that the main goal of her book is to help American readers see India's communalism problems in a global context. She wants to debunk Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" thesis, and suggest Gandhi as an alternative:
The case of Gujarat is a lens through which to conduct a critical examination of the influential thesis of the "clash of civilizations," made famous by the political scientist Samuel P. Huntington. His picture of the world as riven between democratic Western values and an aggressive Muslim monolith does nothing to help us understand today's India, where, I shall argue, the violent values of the Hindu right are imports from European fascism of the 1930s, and where the third-largest Muslim population in the world lives as peaceful democratic citizens, despite severe poverty and other inequalities.
The real "clash of civilizations" is not between "Islam" and "the West," but instead within virtually all modern nations — between people who are prepared to live on terms of equal respect with others who are different, and those who seek the protection of homogeneity and the domination of a single "pure" religious and ethnic tradition. At a deeper level, as Gandhi claimed, it is a clash within the individual self, between the urge to dominate and defile the other and a willingness to live respectfully on terms of compassion and equality, with all the vulnerability that such a life entails.
This argument about India suggests a way to see America, which is also torn between two different pictures of itself. One shows the country as good and pure, its enemies as an external "axis of evil." The other picture, the fruit of internal self-criticism, shows America as complex and flawed, torn between forces bent on control and hierarchy and forces that promote democratic equality. At what I've called the Gandhian level, the argument about India shows Americans to themselves as individuals, each of whom is capable of both respect and aggression, both democratic mutuality and anxious domination. Americans have a great deal to gain by learning more about India and pondering the ideas of some of her most significant political thinkers, such as Sir Rabindranath Tagore and Mohandas Gandhi, whose ruminations about nationalism and the roots of violence are intensely pertinent to today's conflicts. (link)
What's interesting about this is the way Nussbaum -- by training a philosopher -- keeps a philosophical (rather than a political) idea at the center of her argument. She is not talking about competing political systems or the ideologies of individual political parties so much as she is trying to suggest competing ways of understanding the "self" in a world full "others."
That said, Nussbaum does get into some specific details, and outlines a version of the rise of the Hindu right starting with the arguments of Savarkar and Golwalkar, and ending in Gujarat 2002. (Some readers will agree with her version of events, some may disagree. I think she is substantially correct.)
For Nussbaum, the rhetoric of Hindutva is to a great extent a rhetoric of masculinity under threat:
The creation of a liberal public culture: How did fascism take such hold in India? Hindu traditions emphasize tolerance and pluralism, and daily life tends to emphasize the ferment and vigor of difference, as people from so many ethnic, linguistic, and regional backgrounds encounter one another. But as I've noted, the traditions contain a wound, a locus of vulnerability, in the area of humiliated masculinity. For centuries, some Hindu males think, they were subordinated by a sequence of conquerors, and Hindus have come to identify the sexual playfulness and sensuousness of their traditions, scorned by the masters of the Raj, with their own weakness and subjection. So a repudiation of the sensuous and the cultivation of the masculine came to seem the best way out of subjection. One reason why the RSS attracts such a following is the widespread sense of masculine failure.
At the same time, the RSS filled a void, organizing at the grass-roots level with great discipline and selflessness. The RSS is not just about fascist ideology; it also provides needed social services, and it provides fun, luring boys in with the promise of a group life that has both more solidarity and more imagination than the tedious world of government schools.
So what is needed is some counterforce, which would supply a public culture of pluralism with equally efficient grass-roots organization, and a public culture of masculinity that would contend against the appeal of the warlike and rapacious masculinity purveyed by the Hindu right. The "clash within" is not so much a clash between two groups in a nation that are different from birth; it is, at bottom, a clash within each person, in which the ability to live with others on terms of mutual respect and equality contends anxiously against the sense of being humiliated.
Gandhi understood that. He taught his followers that life's real struggle was a struggle within the self, against one's own need to dominate and one's fear of being vulnerable. He deliberately focused attention on sexuality as an arena in which domination plays itself out with pernicious effect, and he deliberately cultivated an androgynous maternal persona. More significantly still, he showed his followers that being a "real man" is not a matter of being aggressive and bashing others; it is a matter of controlling one's own instincts to aggression and standing up to provocation with only one's human dignity to defend oneself. I think that in some respects, he went off the tracks, in his suggestion that sexual relations are inherently scenes of domination and in his recommendation of asceticism as the only route to nondomination. Nonetheless, he saw the problem at its root, and he proposed a public culture that, while he lived, was sufficient to address it. (link)
I think the threatened-masculinity point is interesting, as is Nussbaum's proposed alternative. For her, the way to combat the hyper-virility of communal groups is not anti-masculinity, but an alternative conception of what it might mean to assert oneself as a man. I'm not sure the Gandhian idea of masculinity -- which has always struck me as a little weird, frankly -- is the best way to go, but this is still a provocative point.
* * *
The one point of disagreement I have with Nussbaum -- at least from the extract I linked to -- relates to whether the "clash within" is primarily a matter of Hindus/Muslim tension. As I've been watching Indian politics over the past few years, I've been struck, first, by the degree to which regional and state political considerations have come to dominate over grand ideology and national politics. Secondly, I've been struck by the continuing electoral fragmentation by caste -- the Indian political system is not simply divided on a left/right diagram, but cut into a much more fragmentary array of caste-based political parties that can form (and break) alliances with the national parties at the will their respective leaders. Nussbaum may in fact be right about the principal problem in Indian politics (i.e., her philosophy of "the clash within"), but perhaps she needs to move beyond her current exclusive focus on Hindu/Muslim conflicts.
Labels:
Hindutva,
India,
Masculinity,
Philosophy,
Secularism
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