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Chaturanga

~ statecraft, strategy, society, and Σοφíα

Chaturanga

Tag Archives: Left

Where are the Left’s intellectuals?

18 Wed Oct 2017

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Opinion and Response

≈ Comments Off on Where are the Left’s intellectuals?

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Aakar Patel, Charu Mazumdar, EMS Namboodiripad, intellectual, Left, MN Roy, New Humanism - A Manifesto, Ramachandra Guha, Shripad Dange

Where are the Right’s intellectuals?, Ramachandra Guha mused approximately two and a half years ago. Whether or not the scope of the question could be expanded internationally, its focus was, at least for the moment, on India. More particularly, for heuristic purposes at least, the attention rested on the fields of history, political science, and economics, which, presumably, Guha is more familiar with than others. A few months later, Aakar Patel further narrowed the scope to Hindutva intellectuals.

Both Guha and Patel had stirred up the proverbial hornet’s nest and received a flurry of rebuttals that questioned the methodological and definitional parameters of the articles. However, despite the authors’ assertions to the contrary, the same question could be flipped back on to the Left – where are the Left’s intellectuals? As someone who had until recently considered himself solidly as a man of the Left, the lack of a satisfactory answer to this question bothered me.

What were the great ideas of today’s Left luminaries? Who were these leading lights? As several prominent thinkers such as Michael Walzer, Stephen Pinker, and Camille Paglia – by no means of the Right themselves – have bemoaned, the Contemporary Left has come completely unhinged. In their lurch towards incoherent extremism, they have lost sight of their mission and are bleeding political relevance. In fact, opposition to the Contemporary Left has not only fuelled their opponents numbers but it has also polarised politics and society as never before.

Trigger warnings, safe spaces, and gender pronouns have not yet made their appearance in India – thank the gods! – and it would be more fruitful to restrict this discussion to India rather than take on the ills of the world. The Indian Left has never had the distinguished lineage that their counterparts in the West could boast of. Regardless of whether one agreed with Theodor Adorno, Daniel Bell, Jürgen Habermas, Edward Thompson, C Wright Mills, Stuart Hall, Herbert Marcuse, Perry Anderson, or their colleagues, they presented thought-provoking critiques of society and many translated their thoughts and beliefs into activism.

Indian Leftists, on the other hand, have never existed in that intellectual realm. Several of the eminent leaders such as Shripad Dange, EMS Namboodiripad, and Charu Mazumdar were at best little more than reactionary puppets of Moscow and Beijing. The rare exception, Manabendra Nath Roy, published his anarchist dystopia, New Humanism – A Manifesto in 1947, which criticised both traditional Marxism and parliamentary democracy as unsuitable for Indian conditions. Ironically, the case for an Indian ‘anderweg‘ is one of the fundamental positions of Indian traditionalists who would be further thrilled to see Roy borrow from the Charvaka school of dharmic philosophy rather than lean on Karl Marx, Thomas Hobbes, or John Mill to argue against uncritically imported Western politics.

Leftists may perhaps be horrified by my casual dismissal of their stalwarts such as Irfan Habib, Nivedita Menon, and DD Kosambi among others. Admittedly, there is something of a definitional grey zone in the matter, and as US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said of pornography, we know an intellectual when see his work. The primary criterion for the label, however, should be relevant application of deep knowledge to societal issues, be it via history, philosophy, literature, or some other field. A second yet equally important quality must be the influence of a work or idea beyond its immediate sphere. C. Wright Mills’ The Sociological Imagination, for instance, although a work of sociology, has gone on to affect history, philosophy, literature, psychology, and several other fields. It is telling that such works have become part of the canon for scholars on the Left as well as the Right and cannot simply be ignored. In this regard, the Indian Left’s pantheon falls short even if there may be the occasional impressive monograph with a circumscribed focus.

In the West, the degradation of the Left has reduced its contemporary members to screeching banshees who have little intellectual rigour and are lost in a relativist quagmire, that, in its defence, started with the right idea in mind. With increasing success in achieving its social goals, the Leftist mission took on a self-preservatory corporatist hue as those aims were extended further to avoid the loss of an agenda or political relevance. A genuine concern for non-Causcasians devolved into a shrill political correctness, true distress at the second-class-citizen status of women has unravelled into a toxic movement of hatred and a search for things to be offended by, and the protection of children has degenerated into a defence of laissez-faire parenting.

Not all these issues exist with equal vehemence in India and it would be silly to expect a mirroring of Detroit, Manchester, and Marseille in Delhi, Patna, and Lucknow. Yet curiously, the Indian Left has abandoned even the traditional championing of the working class, a weak concept in India as it is. Labour unions and their intellectual backers in the country have succeeded only at being disruptive forces but have done little to actually improve the quality of workers’ lives – job training, career advancement, health, and other indices remain depressing in Indian factories despite jarring sloganeering by activists, politicians, journalists, and obscure, derivative academics who have all been promoted to ersatz intellectuals of the first order owing to the lack of genuine cerebral heavyweights.

Today, the Left seems to have primarily two causes on their agenda – an uncritical, knee-jerk antipathy against the Hindu cultural sphere, and fawning sycophancy towards the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty. While the latter is merely the opportunistic pursuit of sinecures, the former reveals difference between theory and praxis. In doing so, it opens the Left to a charge of either monumental hypocrisy or an insufficiently examined intellectual foundation to their politics. For example, it is unfathomable from a material or moral perspective that the Left would not constantly challenge the caste system. Yet we see that the Left harps on caste as long as it remains within the Hindu fold but falls suspiciously silent when the social category carries its potence into other faiths in case of conversion.

Similarly, Hindu festivals, beliefs, and laws are subject to attack on all grounds from environmentalism to social justice but nary a whisper is uttered against the performances, superstitions, and the autocracy of other belief systems. From the materialist lineage of the Left, this is a glaring and surprising omission in that not only are certain faiths given a special dispensation but the economic worldview is held in abeyance. Worse, criticism of this double standard is not countered with logic and data but stifled or labelled as bigotry and marked for disregard. In fact, it has been a frequent complaint that the Left typically shuts down all avenues of Right expression when its holy cow – identity – is threatened. Without a cogent argument and counter-argument, debate does not move forward; as a philosophy professor of mine hammered into the skulls of his students on the first day of class, repeating your hypothesis is not making an argument.

Politicians and activists are naturally given to hyperbole and without the presence of intellectuals to present sober perspectives, the public sphere becomes a forum for exaggerations and inaccuracies; the quality of public debate deteriorates and, over time, the population becomes polarised or apathetic. Given the seven-decades-long hold of such a rent-seeking Left on intellectual life in India, it is little wonder that there are few publications to boast of, the education system is a wreck, and the general well-being of the ‘proletariat’ has barely inched upwards.

The Left is proud of and takes care not to lose any opportunity to boast of its liberalism. However, that looks to be a better descriptor of their opponents, the so-called Right. As Thomas Sowell explained in Intellectuals and Society, what is called “the Right” are simply the various and disparate opponents of the left. These could vary from libertarians to monarchists to even supporters of theocracy. Although it need not be true in every individual, the Right broadly seems uncommitted to a commanded agenda unlike the Left. One might even hope that they approach each issue with an open, liberal mind before aligning with an opinion. This is clearly visible in how the Right in various countries disagree on several emotive issues such as the death penalty, abortion, and the social pleasures; the Left, on the other had, is fairly consistent throughout. It is this dynamic the Left uses to fuel internationalisation of their agenda whereas their opponents can scarcely decide what to have for breakfast!

The importance of high quality intellectual framing of India’s challenges and proposed solutions cannot be understated. Leaders, as they say, are limited by their vision more than by their abilities. The Indian Left’s “intellectuals” have been absconding from the policy field and its activists have instead chosen to disrupt with canned, pre-digested sound bites and shrill garble from institutional pulpits. Yet no healthy national course can be charted by one side alone, and the absence of rigorous Leftist thought weakens the Right as well – no narrative can thrive in isolation. As Austrian author Ernst Ferstl wrote, it is precisely because we are all in the same boat that we should be glad that not everyone is standing on our side.

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The Other Jews

22 Sat Apr 2017

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in Book Review

≈ Comments Off on The Other Jews

Tags

AIPAC, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, David Ben-Gurion, diaspora, Dov Waxman, Israel, J Street, Jewish lobby, Judaism, Lebanon, Left, liberal, Orthodox, Palestine, Reform, Right, secular, Six Day War, Trouble in the Tribe, United States, Zionism

Trouble in the TribeWaxman, Dov. Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict over Israel. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2016. 322 pp.

What drives criticism of Israel? Its supporters would probably argue that it is latent anti-Semitism. While there is certainly an element of that, it cannot explain all censure of the Jewish state. The question gets more complicated when some of those voices raised against Israel are Jewish. In his new book, Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict over Israel, Dov Waxman tries to explain this schism in the Jewish diaspora over Israel. Since the overwhelming majority of Jews outside of Israel – 40 percent of world Jewry and 70 percent of the diaspora – reside in the United States, Waxman focuses on the reaction of American Jewry to Israeli policies.

Among the diaspora, the importance of American Jews to Israel cannot be understated. Jewish organisations in the United States give over a billion dollars to Israel in various forms annually, and several members of the Jewish community have the ear of important congressmen and senators. It was a proto- “Jewish lobby” that influenced Woodrow Wilson to support Britain’s Balfour Declaration in 1917 and it was again the American Jewish community that influenced Harry Truman to support the creation of Israel in the United Nations in 1948. As David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, had observed, “Israel’s only absolutely reliable ally is world Jewry.” Naturally, as the largest, richest, and most powerful diaspora Jewish community in the world, American Jewry carries much weight in Jerusalem.

Contrary to popular perception outside the fold, the American Jewish community is not united and unstintingly behind Israel. In fact, from a historical perspective, as Waxman argues, the pro-Israel consensus that did once exist is an aberration rather than the norm. It was only during a short span of about a decade and a half from the Six-Day War in 1967 to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 that Jewish Americans supported Israel wholeheartedly and unquestioningly. Even then, Waxman argues, polls show that this support was usually based either on ignorance or a rosy, idealised view of the Middle Eastern democracy rather than reality. Greater awareness among American Jews since the 1980s has actually increased criticism of Israel.

Trouble in the Tribe briefly delves into the history of American Zionism and the response of the American Jewish community to Zionism in Europe. In doing so, Waxman reveals the subtle differences between the two and how it informed American Jewish attitudes towards Israel. Waxman suggests that initial sympathy and beneficence among American Jews towards Israel was largely to assuage their guilt for their inability to help their European brethren during the Holocaust. American Jewish support for Israel has always been more emotional than ideological.

Waxman presents a fine dissection of American Jewish beliefs between liberal and conservative, secular and religious, non-Orthodox and Orthodox. Despite these cleavages, interestingly, American Jews of all political shades believe that they are acting out of genuine concern for Israel and in the state’s best interests, even if those happen to be against the Knesset’s policies at times! The divisions are also reflected in the issues each side prioritises, even if there is an inevitable overlap: while the Left is more concerned about Israel’s human rights record and civil liberties, the Right is more concerned about security and identity.

Public Jewish criticism of Israel – especially regarding foreign and security policy – is seen by the Right as, at best, misguided and naive if not downright disloyal. Such venting, they believe, only lends voices to the anti-Israel choir with no reciprocity from the other side. As a result, Jewish critics of Israel have often found themselves blacklisted at Jewish venues and events whose donors and/or board members are, at least, less vocal in their displeasure with Israeli policies. This is true for individuals as well as organisations.

The basic tenor of the argument against public criticism of Israel by the diaspora is that because they do not live in Israel, serve in the Israeli military, or are in constant danger of terrorist attacks, the diaspora has no business preaching to Israeli Jews about their security. Critics retort that since Israel claims to speak for all Jews worldwide, the diaspora have as much right to criticise its government’s policies as citizens do. Furthermore, Israeli policies may very well have an adverse impact of Jews around the world and the disapora is therefore entitled to have their opinions heard.

This raises an interesting question that goes back to the very founding and ideology of the Jewish state: does Israel truly wish to be a Jewish state, speaking for Jews worldwide, or is it willing to circumscribe its ambit to citizens alone with a permanent right to safe haven for international Jewry?

The common perception that the divide in international Jewry may be a function of geography, Waxman argues that it has, in fact, more to do with politics. “Secular, left-wing Israeli Jews are likely to have much more in common, at least politically, with secular, liberal American Jews than with other Israeli Jews.” It is not American and Israeli Jews who inhabit different universes and realities, then, but secular and Orthodox.

Waxman observes that there is a double standard in the acceptance or vilification of public Jewish criticism of Israel. Although left-wing groups are frequently attacked for their disloyalty, right-wing criticism of any willingness by the Israeli government to compromise with Palestinians is seen as kosher. In essence, the taboo on public criticism of Israel only applies one way – against more liberal policies towards its Muslim neighbours and not against urging more hardline policies.

Although the contours of Waxman’s arguments are broadly visible to anyone who has even peripherally followed US-Israel relations, the strength of Trouble in the Tribe is the detailed narration of the evolution of these positions that gives coherence to cursorily noticed trends. What is even more interesting is where Waxman sees these fissures in the American Jewish community heading. As he sees it, a change in generations has given the community’s politics a leftward tilt. Younger American Jews think differently from their parents on a host of political and social issues, are more likely than their parents or grandparents to have Palestinian or Arab friends, acquaintances, and colleagues, are further removed from the trauma of the Holocaust and the uncertainty of Israeli existence, and are more likely to be the offspring of intermarried couples. This is balanced by a rightward pushback in the simple fact that Orthodox Jews have a higher birthrate than liberal Jews; with the Orthodox population growing and the non-Orthodox population struggling to attain even replacability, demographics, which Waxman insists is not destiny, seems to be on the side of the Right. Despite the increasing assertiveness – and shrillness? – of secular, liberal American Jews, the mainstream narrative may still be held firmly by the Orthodox and conservative members of the tribe.

The fate that has befallen America’s Jews is not dissimilar to a culture war – differences in political perspectives, moral attitudes, and even psychology between secular liberals and religious conservatives are at the heart of the debates.

Waxman’s even-handedness on a topic that is extremely volatile to say the least is commendable. The author’s historical perspective is also a great method that puts contemporary disputes in context and adds depth to the positions held. Trouble in the Tribe desists from making value judgements and gives fair weightage to both perspectives. One drawback some readers may feel is the repetitiveness in Waxman’s narrative style. The same point is often made over and over again with slightly different data points that do not add to the richness of the argument.

[What makes these debates noteworthy to an Indian audience is the lessons it has for India’s relations with its diaspora – other than of course, the value of the American Jewish community in India’s relations with Israel. In the United States, the Indian community is becoming increasingly prosperous and vocal while the generous remittances from the Persian Gulf are indispensable. How will geography and “peer pressure” on these diaspora affect India? Which India will they support, the subject of their idealisation or the other, real India? What are the potential points of fissure in the diaspora, internally as well as with India? As India steps up to the world stage, these questions will gain additional significance.]

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Searching for Left and Right in Indian Politics

08 Sun Mar 2015

Posted by Jaideep A. Prabhu in India, Society, South Asia

≈ 2 Comments

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Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, culture, environment, INC, India, Indian National Congress, Jawaharlal Nehru, Left, Narendra Modi, politics, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Right, RSS, tradition, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar

Frequently – nay, always – does one read and hear discussions about right-wing politics and left-wing ideology in India, each being pit as the antithesis of the other. Countless hairs have been pulled in the quest to define the Indian Right, Hindutva, or whatever incarnation seems to be trending that day. Comparison to right-wing movements and leaders in foreign countries add an exotic flavour to this cacophony of generalisations. All the noise, however, is embarrassingly misguided for there is neither a Left nor a Right, as understood in the West, in India.

Coined to describe the accidental sitting arrangement in the French legislature after the Revolution, the Western political nomenclature of ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ does not strictly apply to the Indian political landscape. Not only does the country have a different historical experience and political evolution but it is also at variance with Europe in its developmental trajectory. As a result, Left and Right are often highly misleading descriptors that find greater use as pejoratives than as meaningful categories. Closely examined, the division in Indian politics is perhaps better understood as between traditionalism and a modernity imported from the West. It goes without saying that there is a spectrum of thought within each of these groups.

So what are the politics of traditionalism and imported modernity? One site of conflict is culture. Traditionalists believe that India is a Hindu country with an undeniably Hindu past and one should not shy away from this fact. Acknowledging this does not make, ipso facto, India a majoritarian state. Modernists, however, wish to emphasise the plurality of Indian history and argue that a country as diverse as India can stay together only as a secular state. Traditionalists argue that secularism does not provide a level playing field between different belief systems as it does in the West. In fact, non-exclusive and non-proselytising systems such as Hinduism, Jainism, or Sikhism need to be protected against the predatory practices of faiths that are not so. The petty point that receives the most attention at the cost of missing this larger issue is whether the Congress Party, which has ruled India for over three quarters of the time the country has been independent, is genuinely secular or is a conniving player of vote bank politics. Many on the “Right” accept the modernist narrative of secularism as equality but accuse the Congress of minoritarianism, whereas traditionalists beg the question itself and prefer a localised modernity with an Indic soul.

A starker example of the failure of the Right/Left dichotomy in India can be found in economics. Conventional wisdom portrays the Left as socialistic or welfarist and populist while the Right remain the champions of capitalism, open markets and business. In India, the “right-wing” Bharatiya Janata Party has market-friendly economic thinkers like Arun Shourie and Subramanian Swamy and yet it also has Swaminathan Gurumurthy who is suspicious of the entire American financial model. In fact, some of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s views on community and economics mirrors Israeli kibbutzim of the early years far more than it does Wall Street. In between stands Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is not allergic to capitalism or the free market but is also reluctant to abandon the country’s public sector units. Interestingly, the BJP, in its earlier avatar as the Jana Sangh, had stronger positions against state interventions than in its current incarnation.

The same might be said of the “left-wing” Indian National Congress, that some of its younger members might have much more in common with Arun Shourie than their own leaders of yesteryear who advocated control over the commanding heights of the national economy. The Congress party has itself now advocated a mixed economy, building a middle path between state and private capitalism.

The other parties, such as they are, contribute just as generously to the confusion: Babasaheb Ambedkar was a strong votary of capitalism and free markets, but most of the parties which now worship Ambedkar would be reckoned to be broadly to the left of the political universe.

The marriage of the Right with welfarist economics, though rare, is not a new phenomenon. In Europe, Germany’s Bismarckian socialism and the Vatican’s Rerum novarum (and its three sequels), an encyclical by Pope Leo XIII, are Western examples of a politics of tradition, nationalism, and welfare that are not identical but fairly similar to India today.

Another interesting variation on the international Left/Right political framework is the environment. It is difficult to pin down the BJP’s exact environmental policy as it has had very little time at the helm – it is easy to make speeches without accountability while sitting in Opposition. However, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has recently uttered repeatedly a concern for the environment. Some may indeed argue that the BJP’s actions do not match with Modi’s words but the net result remains to be seen. In terms of clean energy, both the Congress and the BJP are inclined favourably towards nuclear power; with the possible exception of France, worldwide, the Left has generally had its reservations on the matter. Similarly, the BJP is gung-ho on solar and wind energy which traditionally saw less support from the international Right – until recently.

It would be erroneous to conflate the traditionalist/imported modernity binary to regressive/progressive labels too. For example, it was India’s “progressive” first prime minister who introduced curbs on free speech and a “regressive” thinker like Vinayak Savarkar argued against untouchability and the caste system. Of course, these are singular examples but this mishmash of views is not uncommon and illustrates the care with which Indian politics much be approached.

None of this is to argue that India cannot learn from the West – it can and should without any shame or hesitation. However, it would not hurt to think through the political scene a little more carefully to make sure we are describing the reality of India and not the Republicans or the Labour Party. Perhaps then, India might start to make an iota more sense to observers.


This post appeared on FirstPost on March 23, 2015.

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