What Makes For Conservatism?

What makes for conservatism? Is it a stiffening of attitude against chaos? Is conservatism a vote for order? Is order a fascist desire? Is chaos democracy? Ending short sentences with a question mark can be irritating. It is provocative. Like an attack dog on a leash, but an attack dog nonetheless.  

A push back against those that would disrupt and overthrow cannot be morally wrong. It is the bane of power to have to confront the rabble. Even the powerless masquerading as ignorant rabble. The rabble expects it. Not being put down spoils its aim. It needs the baton blow raining down on its back for its legitimacy. What does a provocateur do if it is ignored, or worse, treated kindly. It starts to be emasculated. It is stripped of power and salience.  This, shudder, shudder, is Gandhianism. Along with it comes the trappings- fasts, protests, blockades.

It is the reason that a so-called pluralistic democracy refuses to let go of the old man’s methods. Rapists, let alone so-called democrats, are deprived of their sense of dominance without the outrage their actions provoke. Murderers are stripped of meaning and mindfulness. Perverts are forgiven. Unfairness is condoned. It is the ultimate subversion.

When Christ practiced it, dying on the cross to underline his intent, he established a religion that thrived on persecution, and wilted without its sense of guilt and sin. In the hands of unbelievers or the lapsed it was nothing but empty cathedrals. Good for AA meetings, and classical music concerts for its acoustics. Pacifism in the face of aggression is revolutionary. Yes, but it is also a thwarting of karma that cannot go unpunished. And that is why, enigmatically, no good deed ever does go unpunished. The implication being that the ethical or good is just as premeditated as deliberate evil doing. Nothing is accidental or spontaneous. Doing good is a desire to overcome. It wants to win the battle, just as much as its opposite.

The Communists call this ebb and flow, this rubbing up of opposed viewpoints, the dialectic. It is grist to the mill of progress. Of course,  it is seen, Communist progress towards the goal of universal equality has many holes in it. Still, in less than a century, it has narrowed the gap between great disparities.

A pricking of conscience can only happen to humans because it is apparently the only species that has a conscience. But wouldn’t it be a travesty of justice if it is found out that that other creatures, animals, plants, birds, fishes, also have finer sensibilities? What if they have feelings that approximate, and are tantamount, expressed in nature in all its nobility, starkness and subtlety. Humanity can stop putting on airs.

But what can move forward the march of civilisation? Is it a questioning and challenging of the vested interests? Is it the unfolding of an ideology that brooks no opposition? Are great ideas the vehicles of ultimate destiny? Or is destiny made up of the stabs of predatory dominance? What ultimately prevails? Or is it a combination, of the old imperial bell, book and candle?

Are burning of libraries and destruction of civilisational evidence a boorish crime, or the tools for a great cleansing? How can one order supplant another otherwise?

What is moral in conservatism that wishes to establish its version of order by vanquishing the chaos engendered by its challengers? How is a bloodthirsty Maoist less deserving of his brand of coercion? Is the innate aggression and need to convert of Abrahamic religions moral? How can it be though, when it negates free will to the maximum extent possible, out of a dogmatic view of its own superiority.

Are we condemned to live in our chosen silos of belief in an eternal battle of civilisations? Might as right. It has been seen to be the solution throughout history, however nasty it may sound. We are wasting energy by seeking justifications when overwhelming the opposition is the only task. It is the great persuader on the path to victory. Everyone cannot win at the same time. The losers must accept their fate. And the winners must rejoice, even as they shrug off the labels fashioned by the vanquished.

But are we in an age when total victory is no longer possible? Too many forces cross each other out, balance powers and possibilities. It is a relative advantage that we must leverage. The implication is flux, of course. But then, how permanent were previous victories over the centuries for that matter? The seeds of a challenge are sown at the moment of triumph. After that, it is a season.

What then is the efficacy of conservatism. Through the ages, it has been seen to be a bulwark against barbarians at the gate. It uses traditions, rituals of permanence, as reassurance for itself. It upholds and seeks continuity. It resists overthrow even as new orders that supplant it play out their version of the same aspirations. It is perhaps an instinct of survival. To endure, as little changed by force as possible.

In India today we are experiencing a shifting of the tectonic plates. The basis that has served us for over seven decades is found to be a spurious importation in the main. Without the officers that tended those hedges, the garden has been lost to the wilderness. There is a deeper and earlier identity that is more attuned to the demands of the 21^st century, paradoxical as it may sound. The older culture is less restrictive, broader in scope, more inclusive of our millions of people. It is perhaps for this very openness that it was overthrown by a series of pointed conquests. But, happily it never died.

Today, when its votaries are back on top, it has found a new relevance. This is the essence of conservatism. That which endures and can keep up with the changing times.

(984 words)

For: Sirfnews

August 12^th, 2021

Gautam Mukherjee

 

The Watershed Years

Modi 2.0 at the two-year mark, on top of the 5 from Modi 1.0, exhibits both dynamism and moderation. It is difficult for its critics to get a proper grip. They have been trying for all of the seven years with meagre electoral and political results. And here comes another independence day celebration in a nation waking up to its confidence.

Maharashtra, the biggest Opposition prize, has been mired in corruption and controversy ever since the troika that currently runs it took over. Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Punjab, West Bengal, Kerala and possibly Tamil Nadu are strongly opposed to the BJP. However, they have achieved little change out of it.

Modi continues onwards, with his special blend of welfarism for the poorest, economic reform for the rich, diplomacy and infrastructure development for the nation. He is boosting military capability, equipment and morale to the frustration of China. Then there is the undercutting and reorganising of a recalcitrant bureaucracy. The nudging out of smug, underperforming politicos from the council of ministers. The nabbing of the corrupt from years before, and the curious extending of a more or less sincere olive branch to the suspicious minorities.

The forbearance that the current government has shown in the face of vicious and sometimes bloody provocation underlines its political savvy. But it dismantles the old order with the Pakistani style and substance of a thousand cuts- a dropped programme here, a name change there. It is good to learn from one’s environment, and Modi is no slouch at it.

Modi 2.0 occasionally floors critics and tormentors only when they think they have it on the run. When they least expect it. When they are caught flat-footed and unawares. There is no pogroming. On the contrary, there is a carefully cultivated meekness of demeanour. The NDA takes advantage of obstruction and chaos in parliament to zip past bill after bill into law. If the Opposition won’t allow discussion, then so be it.

Still, Twitter has indeed suspended Rahul Gandhi’s account, albeit temporarily. Congress has risen to the bait. Instead of trolling every move of Modi using other platforms without interruption, it is now diverted to doing battle with Twitter instead. Timing. Modi is good at it. Even his closest compatriots don’t know what he is hugging to his chest. And what is coming next.

And now, with the worst of Covid behind us, the economy is growing again. Starting on a low base line means the slow downs that plagued it pre Covid are now history. Big numbers will enthuse the future. New, particularly digital initiatives, combined with a crowd of start-ups, many promising, seeking and jostling to line up IPOs, will catapult India into the modern way of doing business.

The old behemoths, not to be left behind, are now providing the 5G networks and getting into silicon-chip making and lithium-ion batteries.  

The traditional physical trading in goods, extant from time immemorial, is becoming redundant to an extent, and expensive. First, money didn’t have to physically move, from some decades ago. Now, arbitrage is rendered transparent. Where is the mileage in buying cheap from secret locations in order to sell dear in the demand areas? The web is a vast marketplace. Paying for arbitrage is not as necessary. The middle man has to update his game. And the great thing is, he has, with technology as his most reliable partner. It’s change or perish.

China is already out-of-date with its development, debt-trap imperialism. The East India Company is lousy inspiration for Xi. Mao is no better. 2021 cannot be retro-fitted into the Mao mould of bloodthirsty poetry. Mao, Stalin, The East India Company, can only supply the demand for sadistic fantasies or nostalgic motifs now. The robber barons of today are all software jockeys. Not hackers Xi, but genius strength software developers. Chinese aeroplane fighters, copies, are beaten in every war game by almost any make of war plane. The physical conscripted Chinese soldier is a no experience wimp.

5G will vastly speed things up for now. And in time, not much time, it will seem slow, clumsy, and be supplanted. Three months is a decade in IT.

The Internet, long in the making and growing, reigns in everything from design, despatch, merchandising, farming, medicine, defence manufacturing. Nobody does anything from scratch anymore.  Very little is successfully misrepresented or hidden.

Buying a jet engine from the experts is better than developing it oneself. Because the tweaking and stepping up from the best available, is the fast forward future of manufacturing.

Ideas proliferate digitally, and work is done from home and remote locations as much as from an office. Data processing and storage is another huge new frontier. Even Bond-style real-life and movie villains now seek to destroy by introducing software viruses into data storage. We will need data commandos to deal with them and not just steady and freezing air conditioning.

India has intelligent and highly educated software engineers that speak good English, the lingua franca of global commerce. The Chinese are no match in a pitched meritocracy. Indians may not steal or copy as only the dragon can, but it is spread all over the world’s cutting-edge technology development centres. At home is anywhere these days. There is no deficit of geography to speak of.

Utilities yes, are very, very, important. Must be plentiful, affordable, reliable. India has a good deal of catching up to do. But, conceptually, it can be taken as read.

Raw materials cannot be usurped and purloined like centuries past. The robbed become instantly aware. So do the fences and customers. Piratic leverage has to outdo swifter piratic leverage.

The Internet always wanted to usher in a free and level playing field. Now the server masters and the network backboners too are on the mat. The markets, from raw material to end consumption, know their worth. They have the true leverage.

Perhaps national sovereignty will maintain its edge for a few centuries yet. Not so much because of necessity. But primeval fears and mutual suspicion of being murdered by marauders. But, just as castles and moats, kings, lords, ladies, blood aristocracies have mostly gone, so too will sovereignty be divested of a lot of its trappings. The free access commerce that cannot be legislatively or militarily stopped will see to it. It’s a satellite world. Space is on its way to being colonised.

The only losers will be those who rely on the old methods. India in its Vedantic wisdom is definitely the wisest nation on earth. As long as the BJP redefines what modernity means, we will be alright. Modernity is not in the denial of history and overlaying it with a procession of Central Asian Moghuls that found their glory days here. It is wrapped up in its  Vedantic embrace. We are on our way to rediscovering our true selves, and no penny-ante Communist doctrine developed in a vacuum can stop us.  Nor can an exhausted Abrahamic ethos, born in the medieval desert, unreformed, bedevilled by mirages, do India more than the slightest damage.

(1,174 words)

For: Sirfnews

August 10^th, 2021

Gautam Mukherjee

 

 

Of Wogs, Gollywogs And Bhakts

The term Wog- an acronym for Westernised Oriental Gentleman, was popular in the last stages of the Imperial Age, aka the first part of the 20^th century. By which time in the continuum, numbers of Wogs had access, not only to Western ideas, but to the West itself. This covered all the Brown and slant-eyed races – regarded as orientals and exotics one and all. India had its caste system, its untouchables, its notions of pollution and purity, its ancient tyrannies. China tied up and crippled the feet of its women.

The other currency-Gollywog, popularised by Enid Blyton is being challenged lately by the Black Lives Matter Movement. It’s been a long road. There was the highly musical and entertaining Black & White Minstrels Show, now expunged, from every browser, even on the Dark Web. There was the common or garden Hollywood of the 1940’s with the maid, butler, driver, pool-cleaner parts reserved for coloreds, the blacker the better. There was apartheid.

All such racial slotting, its horrible history, and its implied slurs are mostly gone from plain sight now. There is racism and ethnic hatred, obdurate as ever, but under the surface. The once oppressed have also taken to hitting back. But there are also laws against it in most of the West. It recently sent a policeman who killed a young and innocent Black, George Floyd, to jail for 22 years in America.

Today you have Hollywood films in which Blacks and Whites routinely make love, even marry, and procreate. There is talk of a black James Bond. A black Anne Boleyn has already essayed the role. The Klu Klux Clan and organisations of White Supremacists merely exist alongside.  

But who were the Gollywogs of Enid Blyton fame? They were Blacks, who did not look like Masai Tribesmen, or Hottentots for that matter. These  dressed up in Western clothes- Top Hats, Spats, watches on chains, extravagant cravats. But they were always painted in as rogues.

Enid Blyton’s Gollywogs were thieves, fences for stolen goods, confidence tricksters, black marketeers. In her books they weren’t pimps inclined to violence, but that is probably only because she wrote for children.  Gollywog Town, a separate district in Toy Town, partied all night, bottles held aloft in white gloved hands. It might have been all too much for Noddy and Big Ears, but sounded sublime to the young reader.

The spread of  Asian & Oriental Woggery, and the snickers it elicited, was mostly thanks to the advent of commercial passenger steamship cum cruise vessels. These were put on the sea by the likes of Cunard and the P&O -The Peninsular And Oriental Steam Navigation Company.  Early cruises went from an English port to the Iberian Peninsula. Soon they were sailing to Bombay, Singapore,Shanghai, Sydney, New York.

The Oriental Wogs, which included the mixed races, quite often knew how to dance to In The Mood. That WWII rage by Glen Miller and his Band did not call for the formal training of ballroom dancing. Though there was that too, at the weekend dance halls where men met women. Our Wogs were desperate to be accepted, at least to a workable degree. They were willing to be more White than White. In the way, of course, was the tar-brush, the distressing reversion to sing-song in speech, fleshier faces, fuller lips, a certain shortness at the shoulder.

But then, the Wogs, came to encompass travelling Arabs, Turks, Armenians, Jews, Malays, Chinese. It was one thing for Roman Catholics to convert a swarthy, curly-haired, black-eyed Yesu into the blond blue-eyed saviour on the cross. But altogether another to make sense of hordes, smelling of strange foods, and speaking in tongues.  

MK Gandhi tried his hand at being a Wog while studying to be a lawyer in London. He dressed the part and took dancing lessons. But he changed course after being heaved off a South African first-class train compartment. His days as a Wog started to transform into that of a political activist. The sartorial effect was completed in India, some years on, with a loincloth and a chaddar. It was the dress of a a poor Indian peasant in the hotter parts of the subcontinent And it was handspun Khadi, made on his 0wn wobbly charkha. All of it was a big hit. It made a potent economic and political p0int. There were bonfires of mill-made Manchester cotton.  And MKG turned into a Mahatma, a Christ-like general striking Apostle of Peace.

His disciple, Jawaharlal Nehru, also changed out of his Harrow and Lincoln’s Inn suits. And later, the tropical gabardine too. Now it was  white cloth astrakans, churidars, sherwanis and a rose-bud. The look of a future secular prime minister, one part Moghul, one past homespun. Less emphasis on the Kashmiri Hindu Brahmin except for the title of Pandit.

But, Nehru’s was a woggery of the mind that even MK Gandhi could not erase. He kept his Englishman trapped in an Indian body airs and graces intact till his dying day. Overlaid, of course, with fashionable Socialism and a post-colonial but very impractical internationalism. After all, the gifted amateur was revered above the mundane professional in English sporting circles.  

And the entire ICS and IAS/IFS permanent bureaucracy followed suit, with its brown sahib ways, the citizen be damned. This, for the seven decades since 1947. It wore a little thinner with time, and more so after liberalisation in 1991. Suddenly, India stopped being basket-case poor and squalid and began to grow its economy  at more than 6% per annum.

Today’s IAS/IFS aspirants have a changed profile. They are less privileged people, often from the provinces rather than the metro cities, content with government salaries, perquisites and power. This even as the sons and daughters of the brown sahib bureaucrats mostly emigrated abroad or went into business or the multinational private sector.

The phenomenon today, of a ‘committed bureaucracy’, demanded first by Indira Gandhi put paid to the original intent of integrity and service. It came to be composed of left-leaning people willing to do the bidding of their political masters. These, as a crawling sub-species of the body politic, not averse to aiding and abetting all forms of corruption. But fortunately, these people too are retiring, as they are in the judiciary and academia. Thus, making space at last for the phenomenon of the Bhakt.

The Bhakt is a committed nationalist but eschews corruption. Ditto his political masters. So the time for both has come.Since 2014, a very different dispensation came to power at the Centre and in a number of the States. These new people speak better in Hindi and other regional languages, notably Gujarati, and wear saffron and red Raj Tilaks. They don’t generally come from the big cities. They speak in Ramayan and Mahabharata inspired allegories. They tend towards vegetarianism and don't drink alcohol, but are quick to step away from annoying any in the fold who differ.

 To the earlier order, this is the invasion of the hordes from the hinterland. The ingress of unsophisticated Bharat into the corridors of power and legislation. Overwhelmingly Hindu in composition, they are harbingers of a Hindu Rashtra to come.

A clash of civilisations has ensued almost immediately, as the minorities cannot be convinced that such a government will also look after their interests. That the legislatures apart, the judiciary, academia, the bureaucracy, the police, perhaps even the armed forces are being saffronised means a very different future awaits India. It is likely to be prosperous, nationalist, somewhat militarist, confident of its place in the world, and uncaring of illegitimate or motivated criticism.

As yet, the Bhakt is still emergent. It is depicted in caricature by the established mainstream media and parts of Bollywood. The voter could always be ignored once elections were over, but this time  it has thrown up its own into parliament and the state assemblies. To fight the Bhakt is clearly a losing battle. A losing battle as long as the voters stay loyal to the saffron surge.

This alone will see to it, even in a slow and chaotic democratic process, that the old certainties are discarded. Indeed some of it as accomplished is evident in the six years. More will change, just as securely as the end of Article 370 and 35A in J&K. Even its most ardent votaries do not seriously expect its return.

One day soon, just as the Wog and Gollywog have been discarded, the false secularism and inadequate, unproductive socialism will also be relegated to the past. India belongs to the Bhakt now. It is no use calling this a communal phenomenon, or the action of narrow-minded revanchist chaddiwalas fond of cows, bovine urine and faeces.

There will be many changes made, despite the desperate howling of those who no longer matter, to make this abundantly clear. Symbols are revered because they translate into expressions of reality. They create new narratives, new assumptions, aspirations, facts. A new history is uncovered, with links and pride in a hallowed past.

Ridicule won’t stop Ayurveda, Yoga, a Uniform Civil Code, Population Control, a military industry, the identifying of real citizens from illegals, an economic prosperity never envisaged or seen before. Ancient Indian wisdom from the Vedas will guide this country in place of Marxist importations and distortions of history, and be admired afresh by the world. Right now, the Bhakt phenomenon is still a work in progress. If 2024 and 2029 belong to it after the national delimitation exercise, it will mean the change that has come cannot be reversed.

(1,588 words)

June 26^th, 2021

For: Sirfnews

Gautam Mukherjee

 

Red China’s Pandemic Crime Will Wreck Xi’s Ambitions 

The noose is finally tightening. China has presented a golden opportunity to the US. For long years the US has appeased Red China despite its sharp trade practices, its espionage, the one-sided trade deficits, its diplomatic belligerence, its military sabre-rattling. All this because of its reliance on a profitable supply chain. It was a win-win situation for which some irritants were best ignored. But now, the world has lost 3.5 million dead to Covid of which the US accounts for over 591,265.

The world’s first global Bio-warfare indemnities and reparations are about to fall due. But only sovereign executive action by the US can make them stick. Even US based law suits are unlikely to yield enforceable results.

China, said Biden recently, is fixing to ‘eat our lunch’. The President, with decades of experience in government, knows a calibrated confrontation with China cannot be avoided, or put off any longer.

The decision to fix responsibility for Covid was taken soon after a two-hour conversation between Biden and Jinping, with the latter conceding nothing except a willingness to cooperate on climate change.  And like the ‘thug’ Biden called Xi informally, Jinping warned of a ‘disaster for both’ if penalised for Covid.

China may well be running scared under the bluster. It is already reeling under massive internal and external debt, large scale unemployment, food shortages, simmering domestic discontent. Its GDP and exports are sharply down.

Former President Trump imposed tariffs and a trade war but the indemnities were waiting till the pandemic could be managed. Germany wanted to impose $160 billion for itself, but Trump was thinking in trillions.

China is also hard-pressed to continue financing its external infrastructure projects. However, with massive censorship, repression, propaganda and ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy, China strives to presents a business-as-usual façade. Course correcting a little lately, Xi has asked his diplomats to become ‘lovable’ and reach out to international media. 

Biden has tasked the US ‘intelligence agencies’ including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This is in supercession of all the doctorly opinionating so far, and is a clearcut geopolitical move. 

In the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) centenary year, the foregone conclusions in the intelligence report will be submitted, unless Biden wants to absolve the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), of all blame. This, in less than 90 days from now.

Assuming the report says Covid-19 is a Chinese-made virus developed at the WIV that deliberately combined bat viruses with the as yet incurable AIDS virus so that it could transmit to humans, what is to be done?

China will have to pay for accidentally or deliberately leaking the virus. And then spreading it via at least 400,00o infected or carrier Chinese travelling from Wuhan, not to Beijing or Yunnan, but to the US, Europe, and other parts of the world, for over 90 days. Three months of spreading the virus before China announced the existence of Covid-19.

First, there will be formal indictments. Then, massive demands by way of fines and reparations. Avoiding the International Court of Justice that China does not recognise, and which has no power to enforce its decisions, is desirable. Ditto the UN where China has compromised many of its agencies, including the WHO. And where it possesses a veto in the UNSC. 

If China refuses to pay, as is expected, the economic sanctions, confiscations and bans will have to begin. Both Chinese exports and imports will have to bear the brunt. Chinese services and infrastructure companies will probably also be banned.

The American actions taken will provide a template for countries the world over. The effort will be to severely punish China economically. Sovereign or diplomatic immunity will not be infringed upon to avoid retaliation.

Visas to Chinese nationals may be denied. Chinese organisations, often used for spying, may be expelled. Ditto, Chinese students and academics. Chinese assets and investments in the US can be seized as compensation. Share values in all Chinese companies listed on US bourses can be captured.

India’s imports from China were at under $67 billion before most, plus services and companies were banned after Chinese aggression in Eastern Ladakh.  That too was trying to take advantage of the Indian preoccupation with the pandemic.

The US imported almost $500 billion worth from China in 2020. Many countries, on their own initiative, including India and Canada, have banned Chinese 5G firms like Huawei, fearing espionage.

There will need to be a series of economic actions and sanctions to compensate for the trillions of dollars in US damages. America could redirect all imports from China to other countries. It supplies the US with electrical machinery, other machinery, furniture, bedding, toys, sports equipment, plastics, food and snack items. Services from China are worth $ 20 billion.

In retaliation China will probably ban $125 billion worth of US imports. Compared to the damage done to America, this loss would be miniscule. Besides, this pandemic as bio-warfare was planned by the Chinese military two years ago. This is documented.

While up-to-date figures are still being compiled, the US economy contracted 3.5% in 2020, something not seen since 1946. The US budget deficit at nearly $3.5 trillion was at 16% of GDP. To bounce back, huge stimulus packages are being processed as part of an unprecedented $ 6 trillion annual budget by the Biden administration. 

America has suffered over $ 12 trillion in losses during 2020, plus equivalent indirect losses. That is almost two years US gross domestic product (GDP). Half way through 2021, a third wave or more only has the massive and costly vaccination drive to stave it off.

The US unemployment rate in May 2020 was at 14.7% up from just 3.5% before the pandemic. This has not been seen since the Great Depression.

Many countries, led by the US example, will not buy Chinese despite temporarily increased costs. This will create new trade linkages outside Chinese influence. This will be awkward at first, because China has long been a supplier of raw materials, manufacturing parts and finished goods. It will also be monitored and prevented from channelling its goods via proxies.

China has penetrated the sovereignty of many of its debtor nations like a latter day East India Company ruthlessly seizing territory. It has inadvertently shown the way on how to deal with it. Seizing Chinese assets seems eminently fair.

All this, while checking and curbing China’s military and diplomatic attempts to wiggle out of the situation, and its pursuit of world domination.

In the end, it must be remembered that a prosperous Red China was created by the Nixon-Mao entente in the Seventies. But China only began its double-digit growth under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s. 3o years later, China was a US fuelled powerhouse and 2^nd biggest economy in the world. But this prosperity turned its head and changed its attitude. 

The CCP, its militant generals and supreme leader now think it is time to topple the US. However, the unseemly haste of this pandemic, engineered to bring the world to its economic knees, may be China’s Pearl Harbour moment.

To check any military adventurism, coalitions of battle-hardened military checks by multiple countries will indeed be active in the Indian Ocean and the Indo-Pacific. There will be an unprecedented policing of all the possible flash points in the land and seas of the region, and heightened alerts elsewhere. China’s belt and road, silk route, and string of pearls initiatives will be constrained using diplomatic pressure on its junior partners. Those who supply China with raw materials, petroleum and even access, will be asked to stop if necessary. The Straits of Malacca, a main conduit for Chinese supplies to its Pacific ports will be watched and monitored. Along with Hambantota, Gwadar, Chabahar, Djibouti, and elsewhere where China has bases or access.

China could, in turn, menace non-nuclear states in the Pacific/South/ East China Sea region such as Vietnam, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Taiwan. It could also move against India knowing that nuclear weapons cannot be used. 

However, once China undertakes any overt military action, it will allow others to retaliate, and possibly expose it’s lack of battle experience.

There has been a grave miscalculation on Xi Jinping’s part. It is the failure of megalomaniacs throughout history who underestimate their adversaries. This hubris will, instead destroy the hold of Xi Jinping and the CCP over the hopefully titled Middle Kingdom.

(1,397 words)

June 3rd, 2021

For: The Sunday Guardian

Gautam Mukherjee

 

Toolkit For Woke

Stay Woke: Vote!

The Black Lives Matter movement in America, was born because White Supremacists and American Police were still killing black people on the streets. Black people, often poignantly young, who fell afoul of police call-outs. Rather than immobilise them for questioning with tasers or even billy clubs, they were shot in the head, chest, in the back. This might have been from misunderstanding, inexperience, or fear on the part of policemen operating in an environment where the right to bear arms is sacrosanct. White Supremacists, of course, work on eugenic theories of superior races. For them, the only good Black is a dead one.

But the White community is rarely subjected to such excesses unless it is from the school shootings by deranged fellow students.

The African Americans introduced the term Woke, updated and weaponised from the past participle of wake. The term has been around amongst hip American Blacks since the sixties or earlier, but entered mainstream dictionaries as late as 2017.

It means people sensitised and aware of political and racist narratives working against them. It is not a veiled call to armed counter violence.  But a person who is Woke is unwilling to be manipulated into guilt. Or oppressed with racial slurs, being called a degenerate, a habitual miscreant, looters, rioters, criminals, criminally inclined, replete with jail statistics for illustration.

It took a previous segregated generation much blood and guts to vote, in the Deep South. To change City Hall, heads of racist police, the occupant of the Governor’s Mansion and White House, – the Woke Blacks still need to Vote.

Black Lives Matter, just like the successful Civil Rights Movement before it, has, gradually been joined or supported by Hispanics, Asians, Whites, Jews, Muslims, Christians, immigrants, native Americans, the LGBT, Hollywood and TV stars, Talk Show hosts, college professors. Judges. New legislation is being drafted. Police manuals are being updated.

And increasingly, liberal politicians like Mayors, Governors, even the current President Joe Biden, the strongly African-American military, the intelligence and secret services, the CIA, the CBI.

Woke is the next stage of awareness and equal treatment in America. An evolution, for people in a country that is no longer just a Caucasian melting pot. Even though these same White immigrants did all they could to keep slaves, native Americans, Chinese, Hispanics, other Asians, down or dead.

What does wokeness mean in the Indian context?  It could mean judicial reform, accountability of politicians and the bureaucracy, better primary education and health facilities, faster agrarian reforms, efficient garbage disposal. There is a mountain of issues to be Woke about in a country emerging from feudalism like India. But, it is probably best to concentrate on what is in the hands of the people.

Since the coming of Modi 1.0, there has been a consistent if small counter narrative. This has been led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself. He wouldn’t have had two successive majority terms without strong Hindu nationalist support. And so, he has set about addressing some long pending issues.

The very first is philosophical but profoundly influential. The Idea of India, propagated by Nehru, his successors in the Congress Party and government, has been ruling for decades. This unchallenged former national self-image and lode star, exalted Gandhian non-violence, inclusiveness, plurality, unity in diversity, Mughal history, socialism.  It placed the largely loss making and inefficient public sector at the commanding heights of the economy, destroyed the vestige of privilege of the erstwhile princes, made private companies bring up the rear in a mixed economy. It promoted the bizarre shackles of a licence-permit system.  Other aspects included an emphasis on higher education, non-alignment, code for being in the Soviet camp, agrarianism, development, abjectly dependent on international aid and grants.

It was the thinking of a vassal state. A modest, proletarian vision of India in the back-dated, perennial shortages sense. It was smirked at for its high falutin’ speechifying, but grinding, malnourished poverty, its rank inequalities, its rickety facilities, its failing GDP.

 It was a vision that never envisaged a rich, powerful, influential, strongly nationalist, militarily capable India, that understood its enlightened self-interest and how to defend it.  This, which we need to Woke to in greater numbers, has been introduced by an OBC prime minister, born in poverty, who never saw any glory in squalor.

The flowery but insubstantial Idea of India that Nehru concocted in his Discovery of India, an imitation of Churchill’s History of the English Speaking Peoples, has been discarded in the corridors of power.

Instead, we have Prime Minister Modi’s New India. Under the global  economic and political churn ongoing, he has also introduced atmanirbhar, applied proudly to weapons production. Fighter and trainer aircraft, helicopters, ammunition, armoured vehicles, howitzers, machine guns, rifles, missiles, navy ships, drones, cyber warfare capabilities, missiles, navy ships, drones, aircraft carriers, conventional and nuclear powered submarines.

Enemy forces in China and India are no longer confident of any military adventurism.

There are myriad other things in the mix- locomotives, satellites, heavy launch vehicles, digital India, improved intelligence that has prevented constant terrorist attacks around the country, cellphones, start-ups, electricity, water, pharmaceuticals, urban metro systems, vaccines in the season of the pandemic.  Infrastructure built as roads, ports, bridges, tunnels, directly paid subsidies into newly banked accounts.

Modi is a proud Hindu fond of praying at our great temples and pilgrimage centres. And his affection for the TV camera ensures the Indian public sees this. As of 2014, the Hindu in Bharat if not anglicised India, has been given a proper place at the main table. One he never thought he would get. It is a source of pride and satisfaction – a classic Woke feeling.

Independence era heroes, most notably Sardar Patel, Veer Savarkar, Syama Prasad Mookerjee, long ignored, if not vilified, have been lifted out of the dusty pages of recent history. Their contribution has been acknowledged. Their birth anniversaries are honoured with flowers and incense. The RSS, the BJP’s ideological guru and conscience keeper, itself has emerged into respectability after years of being banned and stigmatised.

The urban national consciousness, largely informed by educated intellectuals from the Congress era, is a tougher nut to crack. It is reared on a diet of inherited Macaulayism, Christian Convent learning, Communism, foreign universities, Abrahamic world views, the Nehruvian notion of secularism, slanted Marxist or Imperialist interpretations of history. It is all deeply imbedded, and cannot be turned for a generation or two. 

 But back at the ranch, New India is a strong Woke catalyst for a large section of the people, for long embarrassed to celebrate their own culture and religion. Now such people see many of their own, including some in saffron robes who are in power.  Nevertheless, there are, and will be attacks from the old guard, designed to subvert and shatter self-confidence. Being Woke is to stay resolute and undeterred. Knowing that a passed over order is mourning its shocking irrelevance.

The term Toolkit, long associated with workmen of various kinds is now  also used widely by political activists. They readily recognise the various component parts that go to make up their agitation- finance, political backing, a narrative to flog, projections of victimhood, articulate and photogenic spokespersons, persistence, propaganda, judicial action, headline grabbing violence and arson. They see all this as so much componentry.

Woke for New India is dependent on diligent voting so that the agenda is not trampled underfoot by a resurgence of the old guard. Changing a national narrative is no small matter. Knowing your own best interest amongst the din of alternative voices is essential. Giving up, or turning tail in panic when things go wrong is not an option.

The toolkit and paintbox of Wokeness is cultural, political, artistic, religious, educational, historical, national, international. It involves building links and allies, taking actions with an eye to posterity, pride in our ancient and modern culture and accomplishments, financial success, ability to take the fight to the enemy. Being Woke is being modern and forward looking, unburdened by the inequities of the past. Above all, remembering universal suffrage is a double-edged sword.  It’s use it or lose it.

Voting cannot be left entirely to the uncomplicated minds of the 60% who live in rural India. They have always understood the power of their franchise. But changing the destiny of India as much as Bharat is a very Woke responsibility.

(1,394 words)

May 12^th, 2021

For:  The Sunday Guardian

Gautam Mukherjee

 

 

Sabka Vishwas Costs!

Is there a looming demographic crisis in India? Several states, including Kerala, are also getting there, thanks to a nearly 10% gap in the pace of population growth between Hindus and Muslims. But the grim moment seems to have arrived in West Bengal.

It has been nurtured assiduously over the last decade by the ruling TMC government. The fast-breeding minority population native to the state since partition in 1947, has been augmented ever since. More so, during the Communist regime (34 years) and that of the TMC (10 years and counting). Massive infiltration from Bangladesh of its poorest and most rootless including the violent Rohingyas is the alarming feature. These are the equivalent of the CIA trained Pakistani ISI recruitment of terrorists ‘from the gutter’. This helps Bangladesh’s per capita, but certainly does not help India. It does give the TMC state government a terror arm of its own with low cost operatives who are expendable.

The burgeoning statistics, and demographic spread all along West Bengal’s border with Bangladesh tells a chilling and graphic tale.

The assembly election of 2021 illustrates the problem. It has 1.8 crore block-voting immigrants from Bangladesh on the state’s electoral rolls. This is in addition to an average of 30% of the increasingly assertive minority population spread across the state. In some areas the combined concentration exceeds 50%.

Mamata Banerjee, a three times Chief Minister, who has developed into a ruthless demagogue and instigator of violence, states all Bangladeshi immigrants are now Indians. She has bluntly announced CAA and NRC will not be permitted. RSS run educational establishments are banned in West Bengal. Kolkata has the notoriety of being the state of choice for hawala and money laundering operations.

This same demographic dividend was sought to be utilised in Nandigram. In parts of the town, where the chief minister narrowly lost by under 2,000 votes to Suvendu Adhikary, the concentration is 50%. Banerjee chose to contest from Nandigram for the first time, banking on the minority vote.

She gave Bhavanipur in Kolkata, her usual constituency, that has a large Hindu and non-Bengali population, the go by this time. Part of this was dictated also by her strident ‘outsider-insider’ campaign. A leadership and state that  probably wants to secede or force an Article 370/356 J&K style autonomy. Will the tanks have roll out, as they did in Punjab in the eighties, to quell this danger? Should the Centre wait that long? Are the neo-Khalistanis too not waiting and watching once more?

This is not the first time West Bengal has posed impossible binaries for the decision makers. The Naxalites had to be put down so brutally that the flower of a generation was lost. Only that time it fell upon the Congress led by Chief Minister Siddharth Shankar Roy to deliver the coup de grace.

Those who voted in Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his RSS reared BJP men into power at the centre in 2014, were sure they had backed an unwavering Hindu nationalist regime. And that Modi was backed by a disciplined political party that believed in the propagation of hindutva, Veer Savarkar style. Much of the garlanding of photographs, quotations from the great man, and a prime ministerial visit to the Cellular Jail cell in the Andamans, where Savarkar spent solitary decades, seemed to also make this very point.

It was the first majority government in 30 years. It was not burdened with the weaknesses of the AB Vajpayee led NDA coalition of a decade earlier.  And yet it was not so weak that it didn’t promptly go overtly nuclear. Nor so meek that it didn’t build the Golden Quadrilateral of national highways.

Wrongs, people believed, once Modi was elected with a thumping majority for the NDA, were going to be righted. And many indeed were.

The upper echelon of the government was and has been corruption free. Infrastructure has blossomed. The Armed Forces were addressed in terms of one rank one pension (OROP), and a huge military equipment procurement programme. This time, there were no kickbacks and middlemen commissions.

GST was launched in Modi1.0. Indian diplomacy was carried to new heights by the prime minister himself. Subsidies reaching their intended recipients has become the new normal. Digitisation in banking and government functioning got a tremendous boost. The unbanked millions were given bank accounts for the first time. Pakistan was taught a signal lesson on the limitations of cross border terrorism. China was unable to get its foot in the door near the ‘Chicken Neck’ off Dhoklam and Sikkim. The NDA improved its electoral footprint across new parts of the nation for the first time.

Come the second consecutive term in power, in 2019, again with a brute majority, two big ticket issues, pending from the dawn of the Indian Republic were addressed in quick order. The first was the swift, almost magical takeover of the state of Jammu & Kashmir, into the mainstream. The second was the verdict on the Ram Temple at Ayodhya which gave the Janmabhoomi, at last, to the Hindus. Another bout of checking China had to be undertaken in Ladakh. This, and threats along other parts of the LaC with China, are ongoing.

More military procurement, including many items being manufactured nationally is growing apace. Two attacks of the Covid -19 pandemic, one in 2020 and one, worse than last year, is raging presently.

The BJP gained 77 seats in the West Bengal assembly, up from just 3, but did not succeed in wresting the state government from the TMC. In the normal course, this would be understood as the healthy process of democracy where the voter is the final arbiter.

But in West Bengal, there is a hostility amongst the minority population egged on by the TMC and its supremo that is abnormal. Murder, rape, arson, and terror, aimed at the Hindu majority continue unabated. A band of leftist intellectuals inside and outside the state have tried to cast the TMC victory in terms of ‘Bengali pride’ and its distinctness from the Cow-belt BJP. But if it were only so innocent.

Over a lakh of people have fled to Assam and elsewhere to save their lives. Hundreds in aggregate have been murdered in just the last five years, and this continues even now, after a 217 seat win.

The Centre has refused to take drastic action so far. Is the prime minister’s hopeful policy of ‘Sabka Vishwas’, introduced at the outset of Modi 2.0 in 2019 responsible? Should the BJP MLAs, karyakartas, organisers, supporters be abandoned to their fate?

Or is this minority hostility sanctioned by the TMC mainly a West Bengal problem? Neighbouring Assam, won for the second consecutive term by the BJP, with an over 40% minority population in South Assam, also aided by massive Bangladeshi infiltration, saw absolutely no post poll violence.

Does this not make the border state of West Bengal a national risk? Almost all the violence can be laid at the door of the goons drawn from Bangladeshi imports. This gives it the complexion of a jihad against Hindus aided and abetted by the TMC leadership.

Given that the minority community live and work their businesses in closely knitted ghettos all over the state, they may not have taken into account the consequences of a backlash.  Too much too soon could trigger it. Undivided Bengal has seen some of the worst Hindu-Muslim violence in 1946.  

Can the Government of India approach the West Bengal situation with a business-as-usual attitude?

The rank-and-file BJP supporter in West Bengal is extremely upset. A government with nationalist and hindutva credentials must stop this  in its tracks with extraordinary measures. Then, to tackle the broader issue countrywide, it must pass a Population Control Bill and the Uniform Civil Code, given its majority in both houses of parliament.

 (1,301 words)

7^th May 2021

For: SIRFNEWS

Gautam Mukherjee

 

 

Parties Can’t Divide Castes & Piggy-Back On Minorities Anymore

This is a political obituary written a few days in advance. But should its import come to pass, it will have considerable effect on the future politics of India.

It will remove an eclipsed politician from centre-stage in Kolkata. And it will cast her party, the AITMC, more usually called the TMC, into the outer darkness. But beyond the impending defeat, it will put paid to some long-established political formulae.

It is bad enough that the minority vote has been turned into a battering ram. It is driven by an impressive population explosion, egged on by multiple wives and sharia law spouting mullahs in mosques. Then there is the creeping illegal immigration that has run into crores of people melted into the Indian populace.

Illegals, who are not grateful for a new lease on life and dignity, but who foment violence and Islamic terrorism. Illegals, given state government abetted makeovers and concocted identity papers. These sometimes even disguise Muslims as Hindus, as the national level scrutiny has hardened.

In J&K, rescued from the brink by the Modi government, there is an ongoing effort to broaden the voter base by enfranchising those who are native Kashmiris, but were left out by the previous dispensation. There is a new census and preparation of voter lists underway. The demographics of the Valley which are overwhelmingly in favour of the Sunni majority are being diluted. Ladakh, both Buddhist and Shia, is already blossoming without the domination of Srinagar, or indeed Jammu.

It is telling how, out of the five rioting people shot dead by the CISF in Cooch Behar recently, four were claimed by Mamata Banerjee herself to be ‘Muslim Rajbanshis’. How this oxymoronic feat has been pulled off in a Hindu caste is hard to understand.

Matuas, the other Hindu caste prominent in the upcoming phases of the West Bengal elections are also Hindu. How many Matuas has Mamata Banerjee managed to turn Muslim?

This demographic challenge is not just the West Bengal story. It is rampant too in Assam. The Islamic minority now numbers over 30 crores nationally. Border states cannot afford this wilful and porous onslaught. And neither can the country as a whole.

This time, the West Bengal assembly elections have not only seen unprecedented defections from the TMC to the BJP, but also the support of the lower castes and the Communists. The Communists are saying if backing Modi gets rid of Didi, so be it.

Mamata Banerjee, realising she needs more than just the existing minority vote, at almost 30%, is battling to gain lower caste votes too. They will determine the outcome of over a 100 seats in the coming phases of the election.

Meanwhile her high profile, reputedly rain-making election consultant Prashant Kishor, has washed his hands of the affair. He has blamed her squarely for excessive minority appeasement. The phases so far have apparently gone against the TMC. Kishor avers Narendra Modi enjoys tremendous popularity in West Bengal. This includes most of the women voters.

If there is a BJP sweep, nothing can be done for the TMC. If however, the election is close, who will come to Banerjee’s rescue besides the Congress? 

But as of now, the traditional schisms, cynically provoked to suit, between Tribals, Adivasis, Dalits, Scheduled Castes, other backward castes (OBCs), the upper castes, has also begun to heal. BJP won most of the scheduled caste and reserved seats for the Lok Sabha election in West Bengal in 2019.  Can TMC reverse the tide?

The deliberately engendered mistrust, even the so called lack of ‘identity politics’  bragged about by Bengali Communists, has been pushed aside. All Hindus in West Bengal are now in fear of being swamped by Islamists and see Narendra Modi as a saviour.

Protectors of Islamic belligerence such as the Congress Party are almost wiped out. Without electoral success, the minorities have shifted focus towards disruption and violence. There is rioting, arson, demonstrations, lawlessness, murders, terrorism, sharia excesses, and offensive rants against Hindus across the board.

Even Maoist threats form only a subset to this Islamic excess. As does Khalistani separatism, and side shows like the Punjab ‘Farmer’ Protests.

There is, despite severe economic dislocation occasioned by the Covid pandemic, a determination to push back. The unabashedly Hindu NDA government in the centre and in the states is refreshing for not being financially corrupt. It is also staunchly nationalist. It is working on infrastructure, welfare, and defence preparedness at a frenetic pace. The voting public is pleased.

But what does an opposition party do henceforth, when the perceptually authentic majoritarian party is ensconced very comfortably in power?

The Prime Minister promotes Hinduism personally by observing all major Hindu festivals and rituals, visiting most revered temples, in country and abroad. Once there, he does not just pose for photos. He prays as an unabashed and credible practicing Hindu. Narendra Modi performed all the dawn rituals and inaugurated the rebuilding of the Ram Temple in Ayodhya that had been blocked for over a century. That spectacle, broadcast nationally and internationally, has restored Hindu pride. This may have undone the sacrilege in Hindu eyes done by Mughal Emperor Babur’s general. But Emperor Aurangzeb’s latter day desecrations remain unfinished business.

For the first time there is a seriousness about pursuing the case for extracting the Aurangzeb built Gyan Vapi Mosque from the revered Kashi Vishwanath temple complex at Varanasi. Ditto for the Shahi Edgah Masjid nestling offensively at the Krishna Janmabhoomi in Mathura.

The dramatic progress made on the renovations and clearance of encroachments leading to the ghats from the Kashi Viswanath temple complex is also a matter of immense Hindu pride. Many ancient if small temples have emerged from under the encroachments. A 50 feet wide corridor to the ghats, along with a number of new public buildings for visitors and pilgrims is nearly done. Reinforcements, embankments, repairs to the ancient ghats, roof top Ganga-view galleries, are ongoing.

The word ‘Secularism’ in the Indian context has never meant a separation of Church and State. Here it has been used to boost the minorities at the expense of the majority, misusing the Indian Constitution to justify it. The minorities in turn have extracted out of turn privileges and become belligerent because of the abject political dependence on their backing.

This particular Faustian pact has run its course. Initially, for the Nehru and Indira Gandhi decades, it resulted in majority governments, with all opposition reduced to the margins. This was not just because of the minorities. In addition, the lower castes voted for the Congress Party, run by upper caste men and women. This changed in the late Sixties and Seventies with the Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan movements. After that, the lower castes developed their own leaders and a significant number of regional parties joined the fray.

This, of course, fragmented the monolithic vote. After the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984, there was one last Congress government with an absolute majority. After that, there were only coalitions.

This changed after 30 years with the coming of Narendra Modi to the Centre with a majority in 2014.

Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress is a one-woman supremo. She has clawed her way to power in the face of Communist intimidation for two absolute majority terms. But her career is also illustrative of how the broader polity has progressed. She too was originally part of the Congress Party. She was a union minister in PV Narasimha Rao’s government, and again in the Vajpayee administration after she broke away from Congress.

Back in West Bengal, she ousted the Communists by an opportunistic anti- industrialisation agitation. It was an outdoing of the Communists at their own game. But she never recovered her economic credibility, and West Bengal as an investment destination has languished. There are no jobs, only doles, if that. Mamata Banerjee’s national ambitions will also turn to dust after she loses her power base to the BJP. Besides, she has no political successors to speak of.

So, if the TMC loses decisively on May 2^nd, it is the last bastion fallen. After this, orphaned as they are, the minorities may need to evolve a new form of political jihad. They will have to masquerade as Modi bhakts. This Trojan Horse strategy might work for a few.  Some may even be sincere. What will not work after May 2^nd is confronting the majority.

(1,399 words)

For: The Sunday Guardian

April 15, 2021

Gautam Mukherjee