So here I am in Madison, Wisconsin, walking back to my motel room after dinner and I stop at a gas station on the side of the road to get some candy. As I open my wallet to pay, the man standing behind the inch of glass in front of me notices that I have an Oklahoma driver’s license and asks what I’m doing in Wisconsin. I said that I actually go to school in Boston and was here attending a conference. He then asked me what kind of conference it was. I said it was a conference on political trauma.
He looked a bit puzzled at the term so I asked him where he was from, India was the answer. I said, “Well, if we were to talk about political trauma in India, we might discuss the experience of the partition in ’47.” The man then got very excited and said, “Partition? I can tell you all about partition. You know, the only difference between educated and uneducated are the words that you use. You can use all sorts of words that I can’t but the ideas are all the same.” He then asked me if I had a gun, and when I assured him I didn’t, he unlocked the door to his little “office” and invited me in for a chat. What followed as an hourlong discussion and debate on the Indian partition (which I was happy to admit great ignorance about), religious and political violence, the virtues of British empire, racial profiling in America, and the war in Iraq.
Hardeep is a rather unusual but extremely friendly fellow in his mid-thirties, full of very independent, if occasionally somewhat extreme opinions. He spoke with the delightful intonations of the Indian English accent but heavily laced, if you can imagine it, with hispanic sounding words and phrases. He is a Punjabi Sikh who was raised in a small rural village. He fled India, “which is the world’s most chaotic country. You know why I believe there is a God? Because with all the anarchy in India, somebody must be running the show.” As I was saying, he left India for New York in 1996 where, “I had to lie to get political asylum. Yes, I know that technically makes me a liar but I’m an honest man, a nice guy. It is sad really, all the ones who really need political asylum can’t get it.” He eventually became a US citizen, married a Jehovah’s Witness and became very involved with various Sikh gurus, whose philosophical aphorisms were sprinkled throughout his speech. He would often quote some guru (in Punjabi?) and then translate the word of wisdom into English for my benefit, after which he would apply the principle to whatever specific empirical case he was discussing.
Hardeep gave me his own ten minute version of the partition, which I will condense and roughly paraphrase, “The partition led to the unnecessary death of about a million people. It was the fault of three of the biggest fools of the 20th century, Gandhi, Nehru and Jinnah. Lord Mountbatten warned them that this partition was crazy. It is like all of the Americans moving to Canada and all of the Canadians moving to the United States. Gandhi was an idiot who did not know the minds of the people. Jinnah was a troublemaker, and he refused an offer of the presidency. You know what I think? I think Gandhi and Nehru should have killed Jinnah, killing one man would have saved a million and there would have been no partition.”
I confessed that I knew close to nothing about Indian history but I was curious why 1) he didn’t seem to blame the English for anything at all. 2) Wouldn’t killing Jinnah have inflamed muslim sentiment and generated even more religious violence? To the former, Hardeep felt that, “The British gave us English and an education. They are the reason why India is so great today and there are Indians all over the world. Why the fuck should I care who is in charge as long as they are a real leader. The British were leaders – a leader can tell when something will be a disaster, Lord Mountbatten knew that partition would be a disaster.” Apologists for the imperial civilizing mission would have approved. In response to the latter issue he said, “Are you kidding me? You don’t understand India. I come from a small village. We didn’t have a fucking clue what was going on in the next village and it is the same all across India. If they had killed him at the right opportunity, most of India would have never known better.”
I asked him whether it might be better to think about how the categories of hindu and moslem had developed throughout the colonial period, becoming more fixed and politically charged? Since he was a Sikh, I told him I seem to remember something about the British stereotyping the Sikhs as an aggressive warlike people who made good soldiers – couldn’t constructed categories like this harden and become self-replicating, leading to new divisions in society? “Sikhs? Let me tell you what Sikhs are like.” My new Sikh friend then proceeded to tell me what Sikhs were like, “Sikhs are just a little dumber than most Indians. Most people are stupid—you and I can admit that—but Sikhs are just a little more stupid than the rest.” It looks like I wasn’t going to get very far in this approach. By now I picked up on the interesting strategy he used: seeking legitimacy through self-deprication. We see a similar strategy deployed in much academic debate was well: by insulting or critiquing something others might expect to be dear to you, you simultaneously allow yourself to seem to transcend that identification while gaining a legitimate position from which to offer commentary about it.
The conversation then jumped to racial categories and racial profiling, which got really bizarre. “Look at blacks” he said, “most blacks are assholes. I have lived in the poorest areas of [list of names of many large US cities] and I can tell you that for a fact. However, we should still show them respect. Most white people are honest, you know that. If you refuse to admit these natural facts then you are a liar. My wife, she won’t admit this, so she is a liar too. We are deceiving ourselves when we ignore racial facts.” This kind of racism, which I have heard articulated by other whites before, seemed so strange to me coming from this recently immigrated Indian. I protested with the standard objections.
He continued, “Think about racial profiling. I was at the airport the other day, and the security guard took me aside and searched me. I know I am not a terrorist, that I’m not a crazy muslim, but I look like one. When he picked me out of the line I thought to myself, ‘here is a man who knows how to do his job.’ When I see them pick out the old white man ahead of me and search him, I think to myself, ‘here is a man who has turned off his brain in order to protect a lie.'” I suggested that racial profiling and the general targeting for special treatment of all people with brownish skin could, again, lead to the very undesirable result that hatred and division would spread – with the targeted people increasingly sympathizing with the very violent minority of terrorists who may not even be of the same religion or ethnic background. Isn’t this giving in to basic Terrorist Strategy 101, executed with precision and with varying degrees of success in classic insurgent movements and anti-colonial resistance movements throughout the world? 1) Commit symbolic but brutal acts of violence, 2) generating state repression which goes well beyond punishing the terrorists 3) generating a backlash from areas of society previously unsympathetic to the terrorist cause 4) furthering recruitment and widening support for the movement, which repeats and escalates the cycle of violence 5) until the enemy is successfully overthrown or voluntarily gives up when they believe the cost is too high to bear.
Hardeep retreated somewhat on this point, his feeling was, and he summoned various Sikh wisdom to back this up, that it was all about balance, you couldn’t go to extremes. He despaired, for example, how polarized everyone was becoming about the Iraq war, “I’m not saying I approve of the war in Iraq, but I’m not against it either.” He thought, quite rationally I believe, that the question should be a matter of timing, of weighing alternatives, and a pragmatic approach which does not surrender to complete pacifism, “As the guru [name I can’t pronounce] said, ‘Complete non-violence is a kind of violence, for you are as responsible for your inaction as you are for your action.’ In other words,” he added poetically, “Sometimes you just have to kick some ass.”
I didn’t agree with much of what my new friend had to say but the conversation, which involved much more than what I have reproduced here, was very educational. Even if I found many of his views objectionable, and his generalizations and dismissals problematic, I was fascinated by the interesting combination of views he entertained and a particular kind of logic which he was perfectly at ease in deploying. He was adept at applying his religious and philosophical principles to any and all situations. On the other hand, nothing seemed sacred or absolute to him, and sometimes I couldn’t help getting the impression that he was consciously mocking his own his positions even as he defended them, a highly unusual blend of articulate conviction and perpetually ironic delivery.
Huh, so thats how one kills an evening in Wisconsin. ;)
You prolly made his night. After all one can only talk back to Rush Limbaugh’s radio show for so long before craving real human interaction. ;)
Some quick and random thoughts:
His blaming Gandhi for partition is pretty standard these days, tho factually quite unteneable as Gandhi was against it and had virtually no role in the negotiations that led up to it. In fact, his overall argument implies the one group who comes out clean in his interpretation is the Hindu right – surprise surprise (and the threats of “shoulda-coulda” violence against Jinnah would fit into that too).
Yes, most of the rural folks these days are pro-BJP. (something south asianist intellectuals had to acknowledge in any way). Thats not to say that he or any other supporter of the BJP is ‘automatically’ a fascist – far from it. Most Bush supporters arent ‘automatically’ fascists either. Are they?
“Why the fuck should I care who is in charge as long as they are a real leader.”
Funny, that was actually Gandhi’s view, in a nutshell. Thats why he said the British dont in fact have to leave India; they just have to rule it well and they can stay.
Not a view that endeared him to other Indian nationalists with more banal notions of ’emancipation’ and ‘independence’.
“by insulting or critiquing something others might expect to be dear to you, you simultaneously allow yourself to seem to transcend that identification while gaining a legitimate position from which to offer commentary about it”
-Hmmm. This may be true, but I wouldnt say that this analysis exhausts the motivations that might lead to this rhetorical act. In other words – keep an eye on the cynicism. ;)
“This kind of racism, which I have heard articulated by other whites before, seemed so strange to me coming from this recently immigrated Indian”
yes, its always startling to see. But I wouldnt be surprised if the vast majority of ex-colonials arent deeply impressed with the British (or whatever overlords they had). This was certainly the case in India, tho you wouldnt know it if you only read nationalist literature or – god forbid – postcolonialist literature. In fact, the vast majority of Indians – judging from Hardeep and legions of relatives of mine – dont particularly care who rules so long as they rule well. My own grandfather managed to simultaneously join the independence movement while remaining a life-long admirer, even mimicker, of the British and their knowledge, their technology, their administration, and their customs and culture. He never saw it as a contradiction in any way.
But talking about that would quickly deplete postcolonialist modes of cultural analysis, and so bring that discussion to a halt. ;)
“I’m not saying I approve of the war in Iraq, but I’m not against it either.”
Again – startling to see since we assume brown skin = anti-american, anti-imperialist. In fact, stories from Columbia’s own faculty (which I overhear from time to time at my job) indicate the groundswell of support for the invasion – among third worlders – is much larger than left-leaning intellectuals like us realize, or want to realize. Again I think its a question of practical politics on their part interfering with dearly held ideological commitments on our part.
“As the guru [name I can’t pronounce] said, ‘Complete non-violence is a kind of violence, for you are as responsible for your inaction as you are for your action.’ In other words,” he added poetically, “Sometimes you just have to kick some ass.”
Once again, Gandhi said this and agreed with it. The common perception of him as a ‘pacifist’ really does some injustice to the subtleties of his actual words and thoughts and deeds, which werent so one-sided at all. Gandhi had quite a complex notion of justifiable violence – something that always surprises people to hear, and something that is regularly left out of even south asianist accounts of him.
“consciously mocking his own his positions even as he defended them, a highly unusual blend of articulate conviction and perpetually ironic delivery”
-what, is he some kind of postmodernist? ;)
This experience and your account of it is just wonderful. You’re truly a master of ‘research by wandering around’! Too bad you’re a historian. (Just kidding. What better way to gain fresh perspectives than by listening seriously to those outside academia.)
I suspect Hardeep may have overstated his views partly to incite you to counter them so that you could both re-examine your own viewpoints.
Joel, thanks for the kind words! You may be right about his provocativeness, he tried to get me to stay until late in the night when he got off his shift, but I was tired from a long day at the conference and had to pry myself away.
jak, I knew that if you found this entry (wow, you found this fast now that you use RSS finally!) you would have something to say about his anti-Gandhi leanings, and his silence on Nehru. Can I ask you to clarify some things for me though?
1) Does his silence, and thus we assume most sympathy for about Nehru necessarily betray him as a BJP supporter? I didn’t think Nehru was a pro-Hindu fundamentalist but a somewhat secular socialist type, am I just ignorant? Also, do a lot of Sikhs support Hindu fundamentalism and the BJP? It seems somewhat counter-intuitive to me but I know nothing about it…
2) I actually didn’t find his ambivalence on Iraq surprising at all. Many recent immigrants back in my hometown of Stavanger that I have chatted with felt the same way or were strongly for the invasion.
3) I was interested in what you said about Gandhi’s subtleties about violent resistence – is it an urban myth that he believed the Jews should all thrown themselves off of cliffs or go quietly to their deaths? If not, then since violent resistance to the holocaust was not acceptable, when did he see it as appropriate?
Although I’m an anthropologist, I actively try to avoid conversations like this. Perhaps its because I always seem to get sucked into them? For some reason, people love to tell me how racist they are …
As far as why Sikh’s might support the BJP, see here. It is more that they hate Congress than like the BJP, although the current Sikh PM has tried hard to change that. And with some success I believe – but your friend left India before all that.
Ya, Rss is grand, tho I still rarely take time to leave a comment! ;)
“1) Does his silence, and thus we assume most sympathy for about Nehru necessarily betray him as a BJP supporter?”
Well I didnt take his silence on Nehru to mean sympathy for Nehru; I just took it as neutral or as his not getting around to his thoughts on Nehru; (after all he did “blame” Nehru too, so that didnt seem like ‘sympathy’ for him. I suppose we’d have to ask him his thoughts on Nehru to clarify that. I dont suppose you got his email? (just kidding; I’m not all that interested). I guess come to think of it since he blamed all three – gandhi, nehru, and jinnah – I took that as indicating that the only group he left out were the hindu violence-mongers — thus representing some kind of sympathy for THEM. To many rural folks (especially in the northwest border regions like the Punjab (heavy Sikh populations) that saw most of the violence, the Hindus were often seen as defenders of India against Muslim ‘mobs’ and as the only ones who took action when the government (ie, Jinnah, Nehru, Gandhi, and the British) were ineffective in stopping the carnage. In the punjab, in many cases Hindus and Sikhs joined up to fight against Muslims (and Muslims targeted Hindus and Sikhs indiscriminately as ‘infidel’).
“I didn’t think Nehru was a pro-Hindu fundamentalist but a somewhat secular socialist type, am I just ignorant?”
No, thats correct.
“Also, do a lot of Sikhs support Hindu fundamentalism and the BJP?”
More than you’d think. See above for some of the reasons. Sikhs are probably politically as diverse as any other group (and some have their own aspirations for statehood and outright independence from India, too). But being from a border region that saw so much of partition violence, Sikhs in general, I’d guess (and my Sikh friends when I was growing up in India certainly fell into this category) are much more inclined to be sympathetic towards Hindus than Muslims. My Sikh friends in India have on their mantlepiece graphic pictures of the Mughal (muslim) emperors torturing their Gurus, as a daily reminder of their oppression under Muslims. No joke. That and the partition violence pretty much sealed it in terms of their relations with Muslims; they’re much more likely to vote Hindu (or, for a secular party). By and large they didnt have any similar history of violent conflict with Hindus (until Indira Gandhi and the mid 80s, anyway; long story. Google “Operation Blue Star”).
“2) I actually didn’t find his ambivalence on Iraq surprising at all. Many recent immigrants back in my hometown of Stavanger that I have chatted with felt the same way or were strongly for the invasion.”
–Ya, I’m not surprised either. Prof. Dehejia was very surprised, so was Dabashi. I think many intellectuals are surprised. We should feel lucky we’re not there yet. ;)
“3) I was interested in what you said about Gandhi’s subtleties about violent resistence – is it an urban myth that he believed the Jews should all thrown themselves off of cliffs or go quietly to their deaths?”
–wow, this is the second time you’ve asked me this, its really stuck in your head, huh? ;) I think I gave a long answer last time, I’m sure its in your email archive… ;) The short answer is ‘yes and no’. Yes – if you want to be reductive, no if you dont. ;)
“If not, then since violent resistance to the holocaust was not acceptable, when did he see it as appropriate? ”
–he had an elaborate notion of ‘ram rajya’ — loosely translated as “just rule.” Its kind of complex as it gets into neo-vedantic ideas from the Gita, but you can google it. Most of the literature on Gandhi and Ram Rajya is very lopsided though, as it was seized upon by his political opponents as an example of Gandhi’s “manipulative” (for his oppoenents, Gandhi was always read as being manipulative) attempt to bring theocracy to India (the absurdity of such a notion I can hardly go into here, but its a very popular line with many of his political opponents). SO most of the literature on Ram Rajya and Gandhi invariably dissolves into accusations or fears of Gandhi’s intended or accidental support for a Hindu theocracy. I dont know of any major work that has gone beyond that politics and looked at how he actually used that concept (and eventually I’d like to write about that). Suffice to say its rooted in the Gita and in classical notions of kingship under polytheism. (incidentally, dont take this as any kind of endorsement of a return to kingship on my part; I’m just pointing out the concept is much more subtle than his opponents have portrayed it to be). The very short answer is: ideals of kingship in India (from the epic tradition anyway) involve kings who act as trust-busters and almost never as law-makers themselves, ie, they break up monopolies of power while doing the same to their own power. (unbelievable, I know; and yet there is a substantive difference as many historians of South Asia have observed and have sought to explain, between the way kingship functioned in India vs the way it functioned in, say, European history). Again, one should be able to point out these differences without being accused of advocating for a return to kingship — which I expect you to accuse me of at any moment… ;)
Ram Rajya is only one instance of Gandhi’s positive ideas about legitimate violence in the legitimate state. Other examples are his support of the British war effort in WWI, his support of euthanasia for sick and dying animals (something his Jain followers were horrified about and promptly accused him of hypocrosy since killing the animals was a clear act of violence), etc. Many such instances where he went against what everyone has come to see as his “non-violent” position. It wasnt so clear cut, but in every case it was consistent with Ram Rajya principles as he understood them from the Gita and neo-Vedantic (especially Shankaran) philosophy. (Wiki Sankara (or Shankara)).
Consider also for instance that for Gandhi non-violence was a weapon; a weapon more effective and more powerful than violence. In that sense too, Gandhi was not a believer in pacifism. And a final surprise: He is on record (often quoted) as saying that violence is better than pacifism (but that non-violence was better than violence only because – in his view – it was even more effective than violence). (again the confusoin of terms: Gandhi is clearly not a pacifist in the modern western sense (which is unfortunately the sense that is most often associated, wrongly, with him by western liberals).
Hey Kerim, thanks! I have to admit, I didn’t know anything about the violence in 1984. The conference had no less than 3 presentations on the longlasting trauma of the 30,000 or so who “disappeared” in Argentina but that is far less than the kinds of numbers used in the website you showed me for an event which didn’t even make it onto my (admittedly) limited news radar screen. Is there a more balanced account of the events?
Wow, jak, thanks for taking the time to reply. And so fast as well! At that pace your dissertation will be done in no time! :-)
As you said, you did reply to this before, but I have to confess I got a bit lost. And it isn’t in my email archive, but in my Skype chat archive instead :-) Much better all in one bloc here.
By the way, Mr. Muninn, nicely written piece. I agree with Joel that you should be a field worker rather than a historian. You always have a nice way of ‘evoking’ the personal experience you had, for your readers. (You’ve always done this well, in my opinion; I think I said that to you once before).
Your history writings on the other hand – meh. ;D
Its not too late to switch to Anthro, is it? ;)
I can’t add anything deeply intellectual to this discussion, but I find the comment “Why the fuck should I care who is in charge as long as they are a real leader?” very interesting. I think this view also fits well with comparing how Taiwanese view Japan and the Japanese occupation vs. Korea and China. You yourself also talked about this on your last trip to Taiwan.
With friends like these…. :-)
Here’s the Wikipedia page.
Hey, hadn’t read ur blog in a bit. I have loads of responses to lots of things in that post. It will all come out in a rather garbled form at the moment. How about some pre Generals coffee to unwind and talk about this stuff? Hope ur preparation is going well…all the best :)
Mail me and let me know when is good for u, and I’ll bore u at length about stuff in this post!!
Sounds great, I just emailed you!