A competent populist-conservative analyst of India would be worth his or her weight in gold right now. We need guidance as to think about the BJP story, which has some ugly chapters indeed. The truth about current Indian (Hindu) nationalism is not as on-balance-happy, I think, as the truth about Hungarian Orban-led nationalism really is. But we gotta have India as an ally, and not simply for the China-containment reasons, but also for cause-of-civilized-democracy in-the-world reasons, dealing with Islam reasons, English-language reasons, so many reasons.
If anyone knows of someone we should be reading on this, please let us know!
Carl, you're of course right, 21st c. politics will depend on the India-China dyad to a significant extent, involving many things we hold dear, if we know how to hold anything anymore.
I believe many things in India will be thought through anew--I mean thousands of years of history. The Muslim & British empires, certainly; but everything going back to the Aryan invasion & the Bhagavad Gita.
For the first time, it seems technologically feasible & at the same time politically necessary to unite India. Already, Modi's BJP has introduced digital identity & bank accounts, so you can imagine some of the consequences, if you put this together with the techno-commercial institutions in IT in India. Somehow, the billionaires & millionaires will have to be subsumed politically, to mention only one problem. On the other hand, digital communications will spread Hindi in a way that was neither possible nor very much desired before. Hindu nationalism will spread, too, including, one fears, violence against Muslims. We'll see whether there's any other basis for political community... In the short term--PM Modi, the most successful Indian politician in a long time, one hesitates to say how long, has already turned 70. A problem of succession comes & therefore what Hindu nationalism can offer in terms of a party to govern the country & in terms of fostering elites equal to the challenge of digital politics. This must mean the end of democracy as Americans understand it. The demands of a powerful military to withstand China, drawing from the nation's strength & helping in turn new technology, & the demands of unifying the nation for political & commercial purposes both--all of these point to Hindu nationalism, i.e. what's distinctive about India among the powers & what can justify the vast inequalities between castes, tiers of cities, regions, states...
P.S. America, I think, has made a serious strategic mistake in Ukraine--the wrong kind of defense, the wrong kind of war, the mad rhetoric, the deceptious elites. We will see in our lifetimes not only China humiliating American elites in Taiwan; but India in Kashmir, I fear. Of course, that's also tied up with the Chinese invasion of that part of India in 1962; China doesn't recognize Indian rule in Kashmir officially even today--in recent years, China has forced border clashes again. Then there's the trouble with Pakistan over the split of Kashmir...
A competent populist-conservative analyst of India would be worth his or her weight in gold right now. We need guidance as to think about the BJP story, which has some ugly chapters indeed. The truth about current Indian (Hindu) nationalism is not as on-balance-happy, I think, as the truth about Hungarian Orban-led nationalism really is. But we gotta have India as an ally, and not simply for the China-containment reasons, but also for cause-of-civilized-democracy in-the-world reasons, dealing with Islam reasons, English-language reasons, so many reasons.
If anyone knows of someone we should be reading on this, please let us know!
Carl, you're of course right, 21st c. politics will depend on the India-China dyad to a significant extent, involving many things we hold dear, if we know how to hold anything anymore.
I believe many things in India will be thought through anew--I mean thousands of years of history. The Muslim & British empires, certainly; but everything going back to the Aryan invasion & the Bhagavad Gita.
For the first time, it seems technologically feasible & at the same time politically necessary to unite India. Already, Modi's BJP has introduced digital identity & bank accounts, so you can imagine some of the consequences, if you put this together with the techno-commercial institutions in IT in India. Somehow, the billionaires & millionaires will have to be subsumed politically, to mention only one problem. On the other hand, digital communications will spread Hindi in a way that was neither possible nor very much desired before. Hindu nationalism will spread, too, including, one fears, violence against Muslims. We'll see whether there's any other basis for political community... In the short term--PM Modi, the most successful Indian politician in a long time, one hesitates to say how long, has already turned 70. A problem of succession comes & therefore what Hindu nationalism can offer in terms of a party to govern the country & in terms of fostering elites equal to the challenge of digital politics. This must mean the end of democracy as Americans understand it. The demands of a powerful military to withstand China, drawing from the nation's strength & helping in turn new technology, & the demands of unifying the nation for political & commercial purposes both--all of these point to Hindu nationalism, i.e. what's distinctive about India among the powers & what can justify the vast inequalities between castes, tiers of cities, regions, states...
P.S. America, I think, has made a serious strategic mistake in Ukraine--the wrong kind of defense, the wrong kind of war, the mad rhetoric, the deceptious elites. We will see in our lifetimes not only China humiliating American elites in Taiwan; but India in Kashmir, I fear. Of course, that's also tied up with the Chinese invasion of that part of India in 1962; China doesn't recognize Indian rule in Kashmir officially even today--in recent years, China has forced border clashes again. Then there's the trouble with Pakistan over the split of Kashmir...