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On academics and their open letters : neo-imperialism from afar

Posted on April 22, 2014. Filed under: Bangladesh, China, Christians, Communist, diaspora, economics, economy, Egypt, financial crisis, Gaza, Hindu, Historians with political agenda, History, India, Indian National Congress, Islam, Islamic propaganda, Israel, Jew, Jihad, Kashmiri Pundit, Left, Maoism, Marxism, Muslims, neoimperialism, Pakistan, Palestine, Politics, rape, religion, Salafi, Saudi, Shia, slavery, Sunni, Syria, Taleban, terrorism, Turkey, UK, USA, Wahabi |

A group of sixty odd academics in various UK institutions have decided to join the Indian electoral fray by posting an open letter to the “left” leaning Independent under the headline:

Letters: The idea of Modi in power fills us with dread

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/letters/letters-the-idea-of-modi-in-power-fills-us-with-dread-9273298.html

“As the people of India vote to elect their next government, we are deeply concerned at the implications of a Narendra Modi-led BJP government for democracy, pluralism and human rights in India.”

Concern is always nice. Concern about democracy, pluralism, and human rights are particularly nice to hear about. But when these concerns are raised by voice which are only selectively concerned, that troubles us. These academics are not concerned about continued Saudi rule and its impact on the middle East’s prospects for democracy, pluralism and human rights. They are completely silent about Palestinian ruling junta (that is what it is – because each one of them come solidly from military outfits, and once-dubbed-terrorist groups), or for China, or for Pakistan, or Afghanistan. But more of this at the end.

“Narendra Modi is embedded in the Hindu Nationalist movement, namely the RSS and other Sangh Parivar groups, with their history of inciting violence against minorities. Some of these groups stand accused in recent terrorist attacks against civilians.”

The slyness of academic evasiveness starts to reveal itself now. It is the same method by which so-called professional historians create new impressions of truth by weaving propositions into a narrative and creating a new narrative where propositions become blended into certainties. Note the smooth blending of “some” “stand accused”. At one smooth stroke, these academics of high integrity have made an “accusation” appear as “convicted”, and “some” is used to taint the “whole”.

By their logic, the Congress parivar (family) is embedded in a politics which has had very dubious roles, and sometimes outright bias in defacto protecting Muslim violence from Nehru’s time at power during the Partition, with selective targeting of alleged Hindu violence. Usually the Congress hides behind the legalistic excuse – again first used by Nehru to allow the Islamic violence in Noakhali, Bengal to continue while he personally and immediately intervened in Bihar where Muslims were at the receiving end – that when the Congress sees the victims as non-Muslim, non-Christians, it mumbles about law and order being a state prerogative. Whereas, when Muslims appear to be the target, Congress sees it as a union/federal/central issue. This was the cover under which Congress did not intervene in the genocide of Hindus of Jammu and Kashmir in the late 80’s because in this case it was the Muslims who were the perpetrators. The helplessness of the Hindu surviving refugees, was perhaps the root cause of the revival of the Hindutva” movement these academics so lambast – because many Hindus in the wider arena of India began to realize the selective bias of the Indian state under the Nehrus and the Congress in favour of whitewashing and allowing Islamist violence to thrive, especially if such violence was directed against Hindus.

The Congress is therefore imbedded in a movement, that has always protected Islamism and Islamist pretensions, and have at various times carried elements in its governments who are connected to or stand accused of rioting and communal hatred which amount to acts of terrorism.

“We recall the extreme violence by the Hindu Right in Gujarat in 2002 which resulted in the deaths of at least 1,000 people, mostly Muslims. This violence occurred under Modi’s rule, and senior government and police officials have provided testimony of his alleged role in encouraging or permitting it to occur.”

Recalling is a good thing, but if what happened before under a regime historically is proof of repeating the same then the Congress should be even more in the dock – for the Partition riots happened under the government of Jawaharlal Nehru, and ant-Sikh pogroms happened under Rajiv-Gandhi/Congress, and all the riots that happened before the BJP came first to power, with such spectacular ones as in Bhagalpur, were also under various Congress governments.

The academics think that by adding the word “extreme” to “violence” they can make a special case against Modi -as they perhaps feel, and rightly so, that “violence” has been the norm for anti-Hindu attacks by Islamists or Christianists too. Maybe for them those “other” violence are genuine expressions of grievances,

“Some of his close aides have been convicted for their involvement, and legal proceedings are ongoing in the Gujarat High Court which may result in Modi being indicted for his role. He has never apologised for hate speech or contemptuous comments about various groups – including Muslims, Christians, women and Dalits. His closest aide has been censured recently by India’s Election Commission for hate speech used in this election campaign.

“There is widespread agreement about the authoritarian nature of Modi’s rule in Gujarat, further evidenced by the recent sidelining of other senior figures within the BJP. This style of governance can only weaken Indian democracy. “

Different groups of people agree among themselves about different things. Concepts like “authoritarian” are so abstract, and inconcretizable, that tons of academic papers have tried to make academic careers out of hair-splitting over the very definition of “authoritarian”. Many communists are still dewy eyed over Stalin or Mao, and have “widespread agreement” among themselves over their most fortunate appearance on earth. Same goes for Hitler. Jews have “widespread agreement” in spite of a portion of Jewish origin academics hosted by various UK universities to the contrary – that existence of Israel is perfectly justified even at the cost of Palestinians. There is widespread agreement among large swathes of Muslims about the necessity and justifiability of historical violent genocidic jihad, and significant groups have “widespread agreement” among themselves about the benevolence of sex-slavery of the non-Muslim as part of jihad.

Typically when groups do not want to spell out the membership of the group, or are unsure about their numerical strength in proportion to the wider population – they turn to vagueness, or unpinnable conjectures -so that they can never be called out for lying or pretending, and claiming “widespread agreement” is one way of doing that.

The “widespread agreement” is among this tiny coterie of Indian origin academics – probably groomed and selected in the early days of their studenthood and careers by previous generations and peer groups of British interest serving academics, like the Marxist academics who desperately denied any role of triangular Atlantic slave trade in the kickstart of the British industrial revolution.

The curious bit is about somehow Modi being guilty of sidelining “senior” party members as proof of exceptional authoritarianism. All the Nehru-family members have sidelined senior party members to come to power. Does it not make them even more authoritarian already?

“Additionally, the Modi-BJP model of economic growth involves close linking of government with big business, generous transfer of public resources to the wealthy and powerful, and measures harmful to the poor.”

This is actually hilarious. For this is what actually has been happening since Margaret Thatcher in Britain, happened too even under Tony Blair, and has accelerated under Cameron. Do they want to say that all that has led UK down the drain? Or do they have not the courage to spell out those pearls of wisdom to the masters of their souls? It happens at even grander scale in China, where party-apparatchiks and their minions or progeny ruling over millions in their regional satrapys hog investments from a financial sector which is still centrally and nationally owned as well as managed. No, these academic’s can only open their mouth against the “Hindu” India, and the BJP and Narendra Modi. They have not open lettered even on the very entertaining case of Ukraine, where “right wing nationalists” have been on the rampage with alleged support of big biz and oligarchs who grew into tycoons with diversion of state investments. Naturally – since doing so is not in the current interests of the British ruling interests.

“A Modi victory would likely mean greater moral policing, especially of women, increased censorship and vigilantism, and more tensions with India’s neighbours.”

These academics never protested Muslim censorship, moral policing of women, vigilanteism in Indian Kerala, or Uttar Pradesh, or Bihar, or West Bengal, or Assam, or Christians doing exactly the same in Nagaland and Mizoram, and attempting to do the same in Manipur. They cannot mention anything about those other communities or religions or states, because they cannot afford to show these other ones in the same or worse light than the “Hindus” – then they lose the affection of the system.

Overall, then what does it show about such concerted concerns from such groups?

Let us go back to the very beginning again of their open letter. They are claiming that democracy, pluralism, human rights in a one specific distant nation, is going to be trumped if one man and his party or political alliance gets elected in a plural democracy which as yet respects human rights. One can see why they have been allowed to succeed as academics, because they can pretend an intellect which can be used to legitimize the complete lack of any logical capacity on issues that are of interest to a post-imperialist neo-imperialist state.

The west-European political dogma of the political class has now run into a fatal dilemma. They either have to accept that democracy and pluralism can be used, to subvert, overturn, or cover anti-democracy and non-pluralism – which makes themselves open to analysis as tow whether they had been doing and continue to do so themselves.

Or they have to find escape clauses that can be used selectively to target nations and regimes that they see as obstacles in the way of their agenda of global domination, within their dogma that still allows some mantle of legitimacy for their own systems.

The method being tried out in general for a couple of decades, is trying to enforce a so-called consensus or “widespread agreement”, on very vague and often duplicitous or contradictory criteria to judge if the “consensus” value system is being subverted or not. The west-European dogma thinks it has found an escape clause that can cover their selective neo-imperialist agenda – claim that a certain vague outline of democracy, pluralism and human rights exists – whose identification and verification lies solely in their own hands, which then justifies imperialist intervention in other nations, to overturn regimes, assassinate significant individuals, or economically and militarily destroy the fundamentals of that nation.

In order to find out in whose interests any self-proclaimed group of experts, academics, humanitarians, activists actually are acting for – we just need to check out what they remain silent on in contrast to what they choose to pick on. These open-letter academics do not criticize Hamas or Palestinian authority parts for their Jew-cleansing hate campaigns, torture, rape, murder, or that by the so-called freedom-fighters in Syria, or those in Kosovo and Croatia against Serbs in the 90’s, or the Bahraini state, or the Saudis, or Pakistan, or China, or western Ukraine, or Turkey, or Egypt, or even in their own backyard where the state ruthlessly cracks down with full state violence on peaceful protesters against economic destruction of the commoner.

Just compare their stances on these “other” stuff – and you can identify whom they work for, in whose interests.

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