A Look at the Indian Left’s Copy-Pasta Culture
The city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, recently saw an instance of police brutality against an African-American man named George Floyd, which resulted in his death. It triggered protests, not just in the United States, but in other countries as well. As with many protests of such a magnitude, these protests turned violent, really quickly. There was widespread rioting in several cities where public property was destroyed shops were looted and an entire building, multiple stories high, was set on fire.
It is hardly a big leap of logic that this “protest” that professed the much abused phrase “Black Lives Matter” sparked tremendous controversy and enormous backlash. Inevitably, the issue and the discussion surrounding it reached India.
Closer to home, the whole subject was twisted by every side in their own way, some of which is genuinely justifiable but mostly a highly discomforting bunch of false and unwarranted equivalences. Since the popular political discourse in India is broadly divided into the binary of the Left and the non-Left, I shall first discuss the issue with respect to that frame.
The Left in India largely copies their agenda from the American Left, making it much more pernicious in their effort to make it suit the Indian context. The really bad part is that they’re not even clever enough to disguise it properly or make coherent equivalences.
Systemic racism in USA
Some in the American Left allege that America is systemically racist/biased against blacks. If I were to look at this from the point of view of the people that make this particular claim, the evidence is actually quite obvious. It is arguedthat America was founded and built by the efforts of black slaves [1] [2]. The Jim Crow laws were the most racist laws that directly discriminated against blacks in the most inhuman of manners [3]. And it was not until Martin Luther King Jr marched for civil rights for everyone that the system was shaken to a point where systemic change was brought about[4]. This is what a clever American Lefty would probably argue.
Another brand of people that make the same assertion, i.e. social justice warriors (SJWs), who are much more vocal and form the bulk of the people involved in movements like #BlackLivesMatter, make more emotional and anecdotal evidence to back up their claims. They often use bad data to make their point.
These people argue using incidents where there is police brutality against black people as evidence for systemic racism [5]. While the incidents are perfectly within the bounds of condemnable, these do not form anywhere near the majority cases where the police response was disproportionate.
In fact, conservative commentators often use the statistics of such encounters to debunk those claims [6]. They argue that the chance of a white police officer using lethal force against a white suspect in an encounter is substantially higher than that of a white officer doing the same when faced with a black suspect [7]. This being the case, can one really conclude that the police, by and large, are racist?
Speaking about violent crime, people always highlight how much white-on-black crime takes place. But what almost never finds a mention is the black-on-black crime, which is much higher, despite blacks consisting 13% of the total population of USA and whites being around 60% [8].
Either of these examples do not indicate a systemic bias. There is not a single law, presently, that, in any way, in letter or in spirit, discriminates negatively against blacks. If anything, systemic provisions like affirmative action are pretty much the opposite of that, favouring the erstwhile oppressed races, over their oppressors.
Even if we take a historical perspective, right from the founding fathers, there have beem several leaders who have been sympathetic to the cause of emancipation of the Negroes [9]. It was a white man, who went by the name of Abraham Lincoln, that abolished the abhorrent practice of slavery [10]. It never fails to astonish me, that the people who love bringing up slavery as something white people of today must answer for, are always conveniently forgetful of this little fact.
Why do I care?
While these are arguments where most Indians don’t have any skin in the game, I mention these for a very specific reason. It is because, as I have previously stated, that the Indian Left to the Indian political discourse is like certain composers to Bollywood music. Sure, the output is seemingly unique and pleasing to fans, but, even a marginally aware music enthusiast can spot the blatant plagiarism beneath the revamped tone, typically vernacular styles and desi lyrics [11].
But, of course, as I have also stated, the Indian Left is, broadly speaking, not clever enough to disguise their plagiarism. In addition to that, they are also extremely loosely allied amongst themselves and are prone to turning on each other at even the slightest sign of examination.
For anyone following the nerve of Indian political Twitter discourse, it is easy to spot 2 broad (and false) equivalences drawn to the #BLM movement. One section equates the blacks with Dalits (#DalitLivesMatter) and the other equates them with Muslims (#MuslimLivesMatter).
Dalits : India :: Blacks : USA???
Dalits, or the “lower caste” people, most certainly have a claim to make when it comes to a righteous anger for all the atrocities that were visited upon them [12], by the “upper caste” Hindus, Muslims and Christians alike. Only an ignorant person would overlook the tremendous evil visited upon them by the latter two, unless the person is selective. It is diabolical to do so, just to malign Hindus [13].
Without going into much detail, I must acknowledge that Dalits were indeed handed a raw deal. They were deprived of basic things like drinking water from a well. Even a cursory look at the biography of Dr. Ambedkar is enough to make anyone with a smidgen of a conscience have several sleepless nights. Atrocities on Dalits cannot be denied, truthfully.
A Historical Perspective
Having said that, is the past of Dalits really comparable in this sense to that of the Negroes? Are these protestors disregarding the historical contexts of these two oppressed communities? I understand that tragedies should not be compared in a vulgar manner. The only reason I bring myself to do it here is in order to question the basis of the Left’s utterly irresponsible and false equivalence.
Africans were chained, stripped of every last bit of dignity, transported to whole different continents, sold like cattle and were made to work in the most inhuman conditions [14]. For an average Indian, it is hard to know the impact of several centuries of this brutal slave trade simply because they are not taught this, at any level, with the appropriate gravity.
Even a study of slavery cannot exactly be understood by many of us, partly also because the tragedy seems so impersonal and distant for Indians, in general, even though that has not been the case. Well, NCERT does discuss slave trade. It includes brief discussions on the triangular slave trade, but one can always read further [15]. It also discusses the fact that Indians were also traded as slaves to several Western countries [16] to work in plantations [17]. But, it is a tragedy long forgotten by Indians. In fact, I remember that we used to wonder as kids, how West Indies had players with Indian-like names, never realizing the tragedy behind it.
The cruelty of this whole trade was so unimaginably crippling to millions of people that the trauma can only be described as transgenerational in its extent. This led to an immense churn in the Western world, particularly among the classical liberal philosophers and thinkers of the same period as it was practised. Many such people openly spoke and wrote extensively against this inhuman practice [18] [19].
Several foundational leaders of America were against slavery, but it still took 80 odd years to formally abolish it. Even after that, it was another 100 years of struggle to obtain civil rights for them. And all of this is still just on paper. On the ground, the realities are not so rosy.
Racism Hasn’t Ended, Exactly
There certainly exists a streak of racist behaviour in certain parts of the country that has made the most progress in terms of getting rid of systemic and cultural racism, while maintaining its status as one of the most advanced countries in the world. So, whenever there is a genuine conversation about racism in the US, it has this backdrop. The more genuine advocates of the American Left-leaning discourse generally make their arguments on the basis of all of this.
This is exactly why, when a person from India equates the struggles and historical injustices meted out to blacks to those with Dalits, I call it insensitive and a false equivalence. Again, I reiterate, that I am only comparing these tragedies in this manner because it was already done by the Indian Left. There is just no comparison between the average Dalit man in medieval India and a black slave in medieval Europe. Or even in Africa itself, for that matter, we saw several instances of brutal conquests and near genocides of Africans [20]. One such European monarch was most recently served retrospective justice [21], partially, when angry protestors in Belgium brought down the statue of King Leopold, who had committed or sanctioned heinous acts of mass killings of Africans in Congo [22].
Sure, Dalits have been treated horribly for a long time. Centuries, even. But the atrocities visited upon them, do not even compare to blacks. They weren’t transported across continents or forced to work in mines and plantations, till the time they died of physical exhaustion. So, this comparison, in my opinion, is utterly dishonest.
Usually, I would not written about something that would, in the worst conceivable interpretation, imply that I’m downplaying the atrocities committed on Dalits. But, I truly believe that this comparison, one that I only go ahead with because the other side already did, is not only unkind, but also one that I cannot argue unequivocally.
Muslims And Their “Oppression” In India
Now, let me come to the second part, where the blacks are compared to Muslims in India. This comparison is patently absurd. It doesn’t even take more than a moment to understand this.
Historically, in a large portion of our nation, Muslims were the ruling class. For a long time, under the Islamic rule, several tyrannical practices like forced conversions [23], massacres [24] [25] [26] and Jizya [27] have been very well documented. Right upto 1947, in Hyderabad, several places were still ruled by Muslims [28]. So, it can be safely argued with almost complete certainty, that there is no historical argument for the oppression of Muslims, and especially not by the supposed perpetrators of such oppression, the upper caste Hindus, Brahmins in particular.
NYT Never Misses Out On Anything
As one of the references for this blog, I also read a long (and I mean, really really long) article by Isabel Wilkerson, a Pulitzer prize winning author of the upcoming book, “Caste: The Origins of Discontent”, in New York Times magazine. It was a long winding rant which had so many factual errors and logical fallacies, it will make your head spin faster than an industrial centrifuge.
Wilkerson propounds everything from the Aryan Invasion Theory to the idea of Post-Modern power games among groups in her article.
It would probably take another article, longer than hers (which would be no small feat, since even reading her article took me 20 minutes) to every point she pretends to make. But, I shall only mention a few of the most egregious examples of her arguments, in the interest of saving time and effort.
Right off the bat, she gives me a shock by calling George Floyd’s brutal murder, “a mere citation for people of the dominant caste.” I mean, I understand that exaggeration is a figure of speech and is quite effective in conveying outrage. But, by referring to any group in that context as a dominant caste, she draws an equivalence between the abhorrent practice of casteism and what she believes to be the root of racism, which is also an abhorrent practice. I have already described why I think that this equivalence is disingenuous.
She then calls caste, and I’m quoting her verbatim, “an infrastructure of our division.” So, going by this, any social differences are directly attributable to whatever she thinks casteism is. And it’s not as if, I think, she even understands the origins of caste, in its actual sense, or else she would never have made such an irresponsible comment. I cannot wait for her book to come out and see how it is received. I, myself, do not feel comfortable spending money on a book where the author is so deeply flawed in her understanding of the caste system. This, I mean, in a scholarly understanding. Not that I am a scholar or I endorse the system in any way, shape or form.
Then, and I shall not cite any more examples from this article, she says that Nazism was also a manifestation of a form of casteism, asserting that, and again, a verbatim quote, “race does the heavy lifting for caste system that demands a means of division.” She further bolsters this point by saying that while caste and races are not synonymous or interchangeable, they are not mutually exclusive either and that they reinforce each other.
“Race is the visible agent of the unseen force of caste. Caste is the bones, race the skin.”
This is so mindboggling to me that it scares me. And I shall explain why.
Why Am I So Paranoid
When the American Left thinks up a new idea, it doesn’t take long for the Indian Left to appropriate that idea with a desi tadka. When the West popularized white male patriarchy [29], the folks closer to home dug up Brahminical patriarchy [30]. When they started talking about online trolling as if it was a precursor to something tangible [31], one of our own “intellectuals” published an entire book on the issue [32]. Their idea of white supremacy slowly becoming an all-pervasive force, observable in everything [33] was also not spared by our people. We saw a slew of articles arguing everything in India was Brahminical supremacy [34].
Cries about India turning into a fascist dictatorship under the next Hitler that is Modiji almost parallel those about Trump. We saw how parallels were drawn between the more recent Black Lives Matter riots and anti-CAA riots [35]. Just as every little political leader there whines about civil rights based on group oppression, in the quest of becoming the next Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, every little political leader here screams about the same, wanting to be the next Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar.
There are many more examples of the Indian Left copying ideas from the West. My fear is about what happens when they start entering in academia or popular culture. Ideas like intersectional politics, gender politics, social constructionism and extreme political correctness may start creeping into universities, legal activism and even our regular political discussions, if we are not careful and alert.
I already have problems with the existing model of hate speech laws in India, but if the Left keeps going in this direction, we may soon see a complete Cancel Culture equivalent based on language.
We have already had several cases where people have faced grave consequences for innocuous comments online [36] [37]. The legal activism part worries me to no end, particularly. That is because of the ease and relative silence with which the Transgender (Persons Protection of Rights) Bill, 2019 got passed. I have several objections and reservations with respect to that, but it is best if I discuss it in a different blog post, where I could detail my arguments.
What I Think We Can Do
Make no mistake, it is not as if the Left in India is succeeding, uncontested, in all its endeavours. No. Many issues are such that they require massive public participation (like CAA or even NRC) in order to make any impact on present or proposed policy, which is why I think the non-Left still has a chance to sway public opinion away from any extreme cultural sectarianism and move towards the clearly better option, that of individualism.
It is a steep hill to climb, though, as it were. If the trends on Twitter are a reflection of anything about the current situation of the Indian political discourse, the non-Left, in its answer to the Left’s identity politics, plays identity politics of its own, becoming more and more rigid and dogmatic and tribalistic, instead of becoming more individualistic. The non-Left engages in its own quasi-Cancel Culture, though it is more of a boycott culture, e.g. when Indians decided to boycott Snapchat after its CEO said that India was too poor to consider expansion [38] or when Indians collectively decided to crucify Deepika Padukone’s Chhapaak after she appeared in the anti-CAA roadblock [39]. This took a slightly more official turn when DD fired Ira Trivedi from a program for her “anti-Hindu” views, when her old tweets were dug up by many non-Left tweeters [40].
We, time and again, see this word “ecosystem” being thrown around. I, for now, will just say this: forming an ecosystem mirroring that of the Left will only encourage inbreeding and mediocrity and will become a similar cesspool of incompetence and corruption, as theirs has.
All I ask from the reader is to learn from the Western experience, learn what their Left does and what their Right relies upon as the answer. I, for one, have observed that they fall back upon their foundational principles of Judeo-Christian ethics and morality, combined with Greco-Roman logic and reasoning and traditions of debate.
I propose that each one of us read, understand, internalize and apply the reasoning and morality expounded by great personalities in our own culture. I suggest that we avoid playing the game by the rules set by the Left, rules based on moral relativist principles (everything being a zero-sum game and that there is nothing right or wrong, only identity groups fighting for dominance) and Woke Culture while also not falling for the temptation of becoming completely rigid in our ideas like the Abrahamic fundamentalists.
I sincerely hope we get our acts together (yes, “acts”, as individuals, not “act”, as a collective) and prepare our arguments for when the Left starts its iconoclastic assault on everything we have all agreed upon as our shared principles and values, as their Western colleagues have already partially suceeded in doing in many areas, e.g. gender [41], national borders [42], free speech [43], the institution of marriage [44] or even the concept of private and public property in some cases [45] [46].
I want India to be able to stop their ideological advances and stand as an example in front of the world. And I really think we can do that.
As I often say on Twitter, I am a stupid optimist, that way.