An authentic Indian Fascism

The Shiv Sena chief gave voice to a Nazi impulse in Indian politics — one that poses an ever-growing threat to our Republic

Ever since Thackeray’s passing, many of India’s most influential voices have joined in the kind of lamentation normally reserved for saints and movie stars. Ajay Devgn described him as “a man of vision”; Ram Gopal Varma as “the true epitome of power”. Amitabh Bachchan “admired his grit”; Lata Mangeshkar felt “orphaned”. Even President Pranab Mukherjee felt compelled to describe Thackeray’s death as an “irreparable loss”. The harshest word grovelling television reporters seemed able to summon was “divisive”.

It is tempting to attribute this nauseous chorus to fear or obsequiousness. Yet, there is a deeper pathology at work. In 1967, Thackeray told the newspaper Navakal: “It is a Hitler that is needed in India today”. This is the legacy India’s reliably anti-republican elite has joined in mourning.

Thackeray will be remembered for many things, including the savage communal violence of 1992-1993. He was not, however, the inventor of such mass killing, nor its most able practitioner. Instead, Thackeray’s genius was giving shape to an authentically Indian Fascism.

His fascism was a utopian enterprise — but not in the commonly-understood sense. The Left, a powerful force in the world where Thackeray’s project was born, held out the prospect of a new, egalitarian world. The Congress held the keys to a more mundane, but perhaps more real, earthly paradise: the small-time municipal racket; even the greater ones that led to apartments on Marine Drive. Thackeray’s Shiv Sena wore many veneers: in its time, it was anti-south Indian, anti-north Indian, anti-Muslim. It offered no kind of paradise, though. It seduced mainly by promising the opportunity to kick someone’s head in.

Nostalgic accounts of Mumbai in the 1960s and 1970s represent it as a cultural melting pot; a place of opportunity. It was also a living hell. Half of Mumbai’s population, S. Geetha and Madhura Swaminathan recorded in 1995, is packed into slums that occupy only 6 per cent of its land-area. Three-quarters of girls, and more than two-thirds of boys, are undernourished. Three-quarters of the city’s formal housing stock, Mike Davies has noted, consisted of one-room tenements where households of six people or more were crammed “in 15 square meters; the latrine is usually shared with six other families”.

From the 1970s, Girangaon — Mumbai’s “village of factories” — entered a state of terminal decline, further aiding the Sena project. In 1982, when trade union leader Datta Samant led the great textile strike, over 240,000 people worked in Girangaon. Inside of a decade, few of them had jobs. The land on which the mills stood had become fabulously expensive, and owners simply allowed their enterprises to turn terminally ill until the government allowed them to sell.

Thackeray mined gold in these sewers — building a politics that gave voice to the rage of educated young men without prospects, and offering violence as liberation. It mattered little to the rank and file Shiv Sena cadre precisely who the targets of their rage were: south Indian and Gujarati small-business owners; Left-wing trade union activists; Muslims; north Indian economic migrants.

The intimate relationship between Mr. Bachchan and Thackeray is thus no surprise. In the 1975 Yash Chopra-directed hit Deewar, Mr. Bachchan rejects his trade-union heritage, and rebels by turning to crime. He is killed, in the end, by his good-cop brother. The Shiv Sena was a product of precisely this zeitgeist; its recruits cheered, like so many other young Indians, for the Bad Mr. Bachchan.

Like the mafia of Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar — which, it ought to be remembered, flourished in the same Mumbai — the Sena offered patronage, profit and power. Its core business, though, was the provision of masculinity. There are no great Sena-run schools, hospitals or charities; good works were not part of its language.

The fascist threat

Fascism, Gramsci understood, was the excrement of a dysfunctional polity: its consequence, not its cause. Liberal India’s great failure has been its effort to seek accommodation with fascism: neither Thackeray’s movie-industry fans, nor Mr. Mukherjee are, after all, ideological reactionaries. The Congress, the epicentre of liberal Indian political culture, has consistently compromised with communalism; indeed, it is no coincidence that it benignly presided over Thackeray’s rise, all the way to carnage in 1992-1993 and after.

This historic failure has been mitigated by the country’s enormous diversity. The fascisms of Thackeray, of Kashmiri Islamists, of Khalistanis, of Bihar’s Ranvir Sena: all these remained provincial, or municipal. Even the great rise of Hindutva fascism in 1992-1993 eventually crashed in the face of Indian electoral diversity.

Yet, we cannot take this success for granted. Fascism is a politics of the young: it is no coincidence that Thackeray, until almost the end, dyed his hair and wore make-up to conceal his wrinkles. From now until 2026, youth populations will continue to rise in some of India’s most fragile polities — among them, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Maharashtra, and Jammu & Kashmir.

In a path-breaking 1968 essay, Herbert Moller noted how the emergence of children born between 1900 and 1914 on the job market — “a cohort”, he noted, “more numerous than any earlier ones” — helped propel the Nazi rise in Germany. Historian Paul Madden, in a 1983 study of the early membership of the Nazi party, found that it “was a young, overwhelmingly masculine movement which drew a disproportionately large percentage of its membership from the lower middle class and from the Mittelstand [small businesses]”.

For years now, as economic change has made it ever-harder for masses of people to build lives of dignity and civic participation, we have seen the inexorable rise of an as-yet inchoate youth reaction. From the gangs of violent predators who have raped women in Haryana, to the young Hindu and Muslim bigots who have spearheaded the recent waves of communal violence, street politics is ever more driven by a dysfunctional masculinity. Thackeray’s successes in tapping this generation’s rage will, without doubt, be drawn on in years to come by other purveyors of violence.

India desperately needs a political project that makes possible another, progressive masculinity, built around new visions for everything from culture, the family and economic justice. No vanguard for such a project, though, is yet in sight.

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/an-authentic-indian-fascism/article4112448.ece

he may have done some bad things impulsively in his youth but he was sorry for that in latter years. he felt bad about it in latter days and I will remind you that aurangazeb, nizam, owaisi's grandfather and several other muslim leaders did the same - like I said, it was the norm of those days. you must be a communal and divisive personality with implacable hatred for hindus and marathis to target thackerayji like this, hiding your communal hatred behind blog cross postings and multihued wiki links

Propagandhi711 wrote:he may have done some bad things impulsively in his youth but he was sorry for that in latter years. he felt bad about it in latter days and I will remind you that aurangazeb, nizam, owaisi's grandfather and several other muslim leaders did the same - like I said, it was the norm of those days. you must be a communal and divisive personality with implacable hatred for hindus and marathis to target thackerayji like this, hiding your communal hatred behind blog cross postings and multihued wiki links

This sounds very much like a RGV's movie plot, no wonder he [RGV] was heaping praise on Thackeray

confuzzled dude wrote:

Propagandhi711 wrote:he may have done some bad things impulsively in his youth but he was sorry for that in latter years. he felt bad about it in latter days and I will remind you that aurangazeb, nizam, owaisi's grandfather and several other muslim leaders did the same - like I said, it was the norm of those days. you must be a communal and divisive personality with implacable hatred for hindus and marathis to target thackerayji like this, hiding your communal hatred behind blog cross postings and multihued wiki links

This sounds very much like a RGV's movie plot, no wonder he [RGV] was heaping praise on Thackeray

Charminar turns 'hot'spot
By Rahul Devulapalli, TNN | Nov 12, 2012, 01.51 AM IST

HYDERABAD: The historic Charminar, which usually comes alive on Sundays with a large number of local and foreign tourists and hawkers thronging the place, resembled a war zone with policemen in riot gear standing guard outside barricades.

Caught completely unaware, the police sprung into action on Sunday morning when they saw a tarpaulin cover on the roof of Bhagyalakshmi temple at Charminar. Immediately, troops arrived in the area there and bundled out all hawkers, forced down shutters, blocked roads and picked up several people as part of preventive arrest.

Locals, who had planned a stroll on a lazy Sunday morning, were forced to stay indoors, while women and children peered through windows and looked down balconies.

As news spread, some people pelted stones at the police and shouted slogans.

Mohammed Ashraf, a local resident, who wanted to take his daughter to a hospital as she was unwell, ended up cursing authorities. "My child is very ill and I am trying to get her to a hospital. But all routes are either sealed or traffic is being diverted. The police are in no mood to listen to my pleas. Who will take responsibility if something happens to my daughter," Ashraf said.

As sporadic incidents of stone pelting continued more and more policemen arrived and residents anticipating big trouble locked doors and shut windows. Within minutes the entire areas witnessed near bandh like scene.

The business community were the worst affected as Sunday was Dhanteras, an auspicious day for shopping. Many lamented, saying they had big plans to buy some jewellery from local markets around the area.

The unexpected traffic restrictions imposed in major junctions caused a lot of inconvenience to the public and police who got into verbal duel. Angry residents even shouted slogans against the police. "Why is the police force there if they cannot identify and stop mischief mongers? Why should the general public suffer?," said an old man.

"I am trying to go towards the city and for the past half an hour but I am just doing around in circles within the same area," said a motorist.

The Bhagyalakshmi Temple, which is in the midst of the controversy, however kept receiving devotees unmindful of the situation outside. "On any day we receive a minimum of around 1000 devotees but today there were about 50 devotees due to the tension," said P Susheel, a temple committee member, standing guard outside the temple among hordes of policemen.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/Charminar-turns-hotspot/articleshow/17186424.cms

HYDERABAD
Hyde And Seek
Dabbu-dabbu-dabbu. That’s Hyderabad talk for how the city’s become the scam capital.
MADHAVI TATA

“Aao biriyani khilatun” is typical Hyderabad police lingo used while rounding up petty criminals. It’s an invitation for an altogether unpleasant stay that clearly does not include a portion of the city’s celebrated biriyani. And, going by the number of VIPs currently lodged in Chanchalguda jail in Hyderabad, the joke is the police will soon be placing orders for gilded plates of biriyani. There are at least 10 “special” prisoners, all accused in various scams—Jaganmohan Reddy, of course, remains the star visitor, followed closely by industrialists, bureaucrats, a former minister and now judges as well.

Hyderabad, a city known for its grace, culture, openness to change and love for education, technology and commerce, is now the “scam capital”. A city that embraced globalisation with unbridled enthusiasm under the tech-savvy, laptop-flaunting Clinton-admirer Chandrababu Naidu, this “city of pearls” has now become a laboratory for scams. Take a look at the impressive list that tots up misdeeds worth hundreds of thousands of crores. From the collapse of the Global Trust Bank in 2001 to Satyam founder Ramalinga Raju shocking the world in ’08 to Deccan Chronicle’s strange meltdown, it’s evident that all is not well in Hyderabad.

In terms of scale too, you have to give it to Hyderabad—the sums involved are mind-boggling, the corruption seemingly endemic. So much so, it’s even started affecting popular culture. Corruption is now an accepted phenomenon, evident in the mass public support for Jagan Reddy. Rich kids who flaunt flashy gadgets are teased by their friends, “Kyun, tera baap scamster hai kya?” Only partly in jest, people have added Hyderabad’s love for money (‘dabbu’, in Telugu) to its well-known tag as the IT city—“dabbudabbudabbu” has replaced “www” as Hyderabad’s dotcom calling card. Why, adman and columnist Anvar Alikhan recollects how his Mumbai sharebroker, unaware of his roots, advised him, “Be very careful about investing in Hyderabad-based companies.”

There’s no shortage of recent evidence. Apart from the travails of Deccan Chronicle (see box), the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has recently come out with a stinging indictment of Hyderabad-based GMR’s handling of the Delhi airport. More recently, the CBI raided offices of Navbharat Power in Hyderabad to investigate the company’s role in Coalgate. One of Navbharat Power’s promoters, Y. Harishchandra Prasad, is a widely respected industrialist who often holds forth in various round-table discussions about flaws in government and industry policies.


The triggers for Hyderabad’s scams are (not surprisingly) a combination of land, politics and greed. But what continues to amaze is the sheer scale of this loot: Jagan’s illegal assets were alone supposed to be worth over Rs 1,00,000 crore, and none of the scams listed on the previous page are less than $1 billion, about Rs 5,000 crore. How? Well, being a pioneer of money politics, Andhra Pradesh is naturally a fertile ground for scams, feels Lok Satta party president and MLA Jayaprakash Narayan. “Corporate activity is still feudal in AP. Locally grown entrepreneurs are too intimate with the political class. Since political parties invest huge money in elections, they have no option but to indulge in all kinds of irregularities,” he says, adding that since the media has become so polarised, “there is massive corruption and massive publicity as well.”

Member of the Legislative Council and political analyst Prof K. Nageshwar agrees that high economic growth, political manipulation of the economy and emergence of crony capitalism have created a class of people who want to use political power for windfall private gains. “As long as Satyam founder Ramalinga Raju was producing software, it was fine. But then he got into real estate and tried to make money through shortcuts. That caused his ruin. Similarly, in the case of Deccan Chronicle, as long as Venkat Ram Reddy was in the newspaper business, he did well. Trouble started with their speculative businesses and lavish spending,” he says.



—estimated as one of the highest in India—is also the cause of many ills. An MLA aspirant spends a minimum of Rs 5 crore and a prospective MP at least Rs 10 crore. Obviously, these MLAs and MPs will try to recover their expenses through corrupt means. The linear equation for politics in AP appears to be corruption+welfare=power. It doesn’t help matters that this corruption- and welfare-fuelled boom has created expectations in the middle class who want a share of the pie. “New money has created anomalies,” warns political scientist Jyotirmaya Sharma.

Apart from a few corporate scams, however, the bulk of problems have to do with AP’s drive to transfer public resources to private players. G. Haragopal, a professor with the Centre for Human Rights, University of Hyderabad, says that land-grabbing began in right earnest when the Telugu Desam came to power as there was a concentration of social, political and economic power in one class, the Kammas. “Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy went a step further, began auctioning lands to fund his welfare schemes. But this was a one-time income. Naturally, funds had to come through other means. Welfarism gave YSR a good image and he began to rule ruthlessly, unleashing various scams,” he says. Sure, there were scams earlier too: the biggest scam that rocked the Chandrababu Naidu government was the Yeleru scam involving the construction of the Yeleru Canal in 1996 in Visakhapatnam district. Farmers were supposed to get enhanced compensation for the loss of their farmland. Politicians and bureaucrats sanctioned release of funds but the amount never reached them.
In this regard, it’s indicative that the state has the most number of operational SEZs in the country. “Land is the commodity where the scams take place. Apart from this, AP has a high number of mineral franchises and merchant power plants. Its coastline, 940 km, is very long. Roughly half of this has been given away to the private sector with exclusive sovereign rights over waters. What else can you expect but plundering of resources?” asks ex-Union power secretary E.A.S Sarma. Citing Vanpic as an example, Sarma says the hinterland of about 28,000 acres cutting across three districts has been gifted on a platter. The government even went to the extent of amending the laws meant to protect assigned lands in this case.



http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?282212