'Buffalo Nationalism'
The arrogance of power, pluralistic darkness and epic overshoot!
The headlines from India are awash with the word ‘Bharat’. Swollen with nationalist glory, especially after landing ‘Chandrayan’ on the southern pole of the Moon, the far-right regime of India wants to change the name of the nation itself, from India to ‘Bharat’. I am an Indian and in this context, changing the name of my country makes as much difference as getting a new haircut or reads more like the ‘emperors new cloths’ (absolute pluralistic darkness). This type of a vainglorious project requisites a citizen’s response. The world’s oldest surviving apartheid, India, is getting re-baptized and blessed by “the arrogance of power”.
India, Hindustan, Bharat, Indus or what prior ancient titles, the land of “a million mutinies” (VS Naipaul 1992), a nation chalked out by the British colonizers and not Indians, is now in epic overshoot, rage and disorder, facing possibility of near-term collapse. The new ‘Bharat’ is yet another lofty charade, like the recent moon trip, to mask a deeply troubled landmass, falling apart in many ways visible and invisible. Perhaps the time is perfect then, to document the ‘great unraveling’ of India. The dance of ‘buffalo nationalism’ upon the debris of a long dead civilization, exhausted by decades of horrible elite regimes and the unfolding impacts of climate change, mass exodus, widespread water shortage and multiple crop failures, all coalescing upon a nation, on the verge of implosion.
The Hindu far-right’s renaming of India is an extension of ‘buffalo nationalism’. A term aptly coined by Prof. Kancha Llaiha (Shepherd) in the late 1980s. A radical Dalit academic from the Deccan, Llaiha can be viewed as a ‘rockstar’ for millions of Dalits (Anveshi) or an academic brave enough to document and critique the farce of “Hindu spirituality” which coincides with the rise of Neo-fascist leaders, cult worship, false history, xenophobia, anti-science, magic thinking along with pro-Hindu media, movies, literature, festivals, music etc. All of which systematically disempowered the Dalits, minorities, the working class, the farmers, landless labor, migrants, transgender and the tribal of India.
What Indian nationalists assume, much like earlier nationalists from Italy, Japan, Germany, Russia, England and China, that human beings can be classified like ‘insects’ and that whole blocks of (millions or tens of millions) people can be labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or at best dumped aside as “lumpen proletariat”. The Leviathan lives, within minds of people who don’t practice politics but use it as a platform for their rage, ignorance and prejudice.
“My generation has lost its connection to rural India,” P. Sainath age 58, a renowned Indian activist, academic and writer, focusing on the systematic destruction of India’s agriculture and rural life, reeling under decades of neoliberal style ‘infinite growth’. “The generation that’s coming after us doesn’t even know that a connection existed. My grandmother’s generation knew when water came from the rains, and they put out vessels to store water. My generation grew up thinking that water came from a tap…”. Sainath with humility and experience, can foresee “the end of Indian village life” on the horizon.
No irony that millions of young urban Indians believe that drinking water is limitless and comes out of plastic bottles or big tanks going around on wheels. In less than 25 years of wanton neoliberal action, western approved agronomic plans, top-down measures, use of GMO seeds, destructive pesticides and fertilizers, plus ‘free-for-all’ groundwater use for ‘wild’ urban construction, together can be seen as a set of deadly negative feedback loops, evolving into a Metacrisis. Millions of landless rural Indians huddle inside the five Mega-cities of India, to eventually serve the middle and upper class. As servants, drivers, nannies, cleaners, cooks, security, construction, repair etc etc. India’s middle class is perhaps too caught up in nation building or playing ‘catch up’ with the West, or just watching cricket, Bollywood movies, elite scandals, border skirmishes with China etc. “The future depends on what we do today.” (M.K. Gandhi)
At the heart of this oversight is overall indifference. Approximately 580 million Indians struggle every day to secure 4 liters of drinking water (SIWI Water Governance Monitor 2022). In 2001, the figure was approximately 390 million. New Delhi, capital megacity (24 million people) has less than 2 years of groundwater reserves. The mainstream media of India wants us to believe the opposite: “How the middle class will play the hero in India's rise as world power…” (Economic Times 2022).
India will not rise to any world power, let alone attain Asiatic dominance like China or Japan did. Not even by divine Hindu power or a magical turn of events, especially when we visit and observe rural India or take the time to read emerging studies, evidence and level headed socio-economic forecast. "Now people are struggling for human rights more than justice …Attack on life, liberty and democratic rights, orchestrated by the State and the business class…" (Arundhati Roy, Booker Prize Winner, writer and activist). The Modi regime has not declared India’s poverty figures since 2011 (Down To Earth 2022). Global Burden of Disease (2019) shows 5.2 million annual deaths due to respiratory diseases, cancer and high blood pressure or sugar in India.
“I come from a poor family, I have seen real poverty. The poor need respect, and it begins with cleanliness” Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. He appears like a saint on TV and in front of public, but operates more like a vicious thug in reality. Worth highlighting to those unaware, is Modi’s complicit involvement in the 2002 ethnic cleansing of Muslim minorities in Gujarat. A 2006 peer reviewed investigation reveals his role in the planned massacre of minorities (The Black Book Of Gujarat by ML Sondhi). Also watch the epic documentary ‘Ram Kay Name’ (In the name of Ram) by Anand Patwardhan, which tracks Hindu xenophobia, its rise to power, from locally spawned hate, to cadre based terrorism, widespread censorship to the triumph of Neo-fascist Hindu power (2013). The barking overlord of Buffalo Nationalism, Modi.
The founding fathers (sorry but there were no mothers) of Hindu nationalism, were deeply inspired by the Nazis, by Hitler, Goering and the overall grandiosity of the Third Reich. Call it the “Pedagogy Of The Oppressed” (Paulo Freire). 80 years on, inside the heart of buffalo nationalism, men emboldened by their zealous but saintly ‘overlord’ have set up “Hitler dens”. Not for political rabble rousing, but as pool parlors and gaming arcades, decorated with swastikas, pictures of Adolf Hitler next to Hindu Gods. Owner Baljit Ghoshal (from Nagpur) hits back by saying “There is no way we will change the name.. the name is part of our identity”. Yes but change name of your country by all means…
But about poverty, instead of the fist-clenched Prime Minister, lets hear it from a real Indian girl, who is actually ‘poor’ yet pushing the limits as hard as anyone can. “We have not had electricity in my home in Jharia for the last 4-5 months. My two siblings and I manage to study a bit with the use of a torch, but it works only for 45 minutes before it needs to charge again. Kharia Kocha is a village nearby with a few more houses that have electricity. But on days that we cannot goto Kharia we have to ration the charge left in the battery, or we make do with candles.” Sombari Baskey, Purbi Singhbhum, age 13, district of Jharkhand.
While Jharkhand is often touted by the media as a “success story of neoliberal policies and rapid economic development”, yet on ground, social workers, journalists and NGOs provide us a grim adverse looking reality. Of gradual abandonment, round the year water shortage, big electricity outages, rising cases of respiratory disease and malnutrition. India accounts for nearly one-third of the world's 155.2 million children who are stunted, due to prolonged insufficiency of food (UNHCR 2019).
“Indians are not so much leaving the countryside to seek better-paying jobs in the city, as they are fleeing increasing poverty, resulting from the stagnation of agricultural growth, the rising cost of inputs like water, seeds and fertilizers, all of which also causes an overall shortage of land itself.” (P. Sainath 2017). India’s landless agricultural laborers now outnumber land owning farmers by 7:1. The average plot size of those who do own land is all the more shrinking. Roughly 75% of India’s land-owning farmers till less than two and a half acres of land (National Sample Survey Organization 2018). From such small land holdings, the average income is roughly $90 a month but it costs them $105 a month to raise their crops (OECD 2020). 600 farmers committed suicide in 2022 alone, mostly by drinking pesticides or poison. In a dog-eat-dog situation, loan sharks and private banks finish the deal. Indian farmer suicides between 2001 - 2021 is roughly 115,000 (NCRB 2022). Highest in the world. Alarming pointers which contain future outcomes, worse, not just for farmers and labor, but the entire food security of India.
A centuries long agrarian economy, many times cited as the “backbone of India” is exhausted and at a dead-end. Like India, similar events are going on next door, in Pakistan and Bangladesh, together clubbed as a subcontinent, now packed beyond limits with about 1.78 billion people (22.4% of global population). A preposterous overshoot of not just population, but also emissions, construction, industrialization, land use and mining is on, and vast majority of Indians, poor or rich, Left or Right, rural or urban show less concerns, let alone what science has to tell us about India’s incoming share of the biosphere crisis (climate change).
Meanwhile, the ‘Baniya’ (business class) of India has effectively hollowed out the nation, further weakening future resilience, however pretending to be just around the corner to become the “next superpower”. Hideous slogans like “Achhey Din” (happy days) never actualize in reality. Yes they did it way better than the previous regimes, by decimating laws, policies, institutions, NGOs and resources, while ramping up violence, propaganda, misinformation and fear. Upon who? The poorest and most hard working people of India. “Nationalism is inseparable from the desire for limitless power.” (George Orwell)
For the average Indian xenophobe the enemy is out there, coming to destroy his legacy, pollute his culture, spread disease in his society, loot his gated community, rape his women etc etc which coincides with similar narratives spun in America, Hungary, Israel, Austria, Spain, Bangladesh, Mynamar and Poland to name a few. Whats common between these folks is “competitive prestige” and demagoguery.
Author Pankaj Mishra, born and brought up in Uttar Pradesh, sums up this global rise of hate, anger and tribalism at a recent presentation for the Hannah Arendt Center as “…dehumanizing millions of people, goes hand in hand with a deadly combination- the arrogance of power, arrogance of mind, utterly irrational confidence and an overall failure to deal with reality and incoming future...”. India is releasing immense pent up emotional energy of the negative kind, kindling up gigantic numbers of totally disenfranchised people. Nationalism is also a lot of jingoism.
Is not easy to confront an ugly proposition, that perhaps India’s ‘collective trauma’ has paved the way towards the ongoing tyranny and disintegration.
Buffalo nationalism (also known as Hindutva) bears resemblance to 19th century race theories spun by western European intellectuals as well as trace qualities of 20th century Fascism, anti-Semitism and Nazism. How all three terminated themselves, in epic horror and self-destruction is well known history. Like the Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, Armenians, european socialists, liberals, communists, artists, intellectuals, average women, men and children were dehumanized and exterminated in concentration camps (1937-1945) the far-right of India is also scaling up projects (Detention Camps), rounding up thousands of immigrants and undocumented poor Bangladeshis for deportation. Next door, the Chinese regime operates internment camps in Xinjiang, Orku and Wenqua. Rings a familiar bell? Like the ICE, the FBI, the Republicans and Democrats alike in America, and the rounding up of thousands of Latinos and Latinas, jailed and or waiting deportation. Societies in deep overshoot, practising dehumanization, reveal “a tremulous realm of subterranean revenge and absurdity” (Nietzsche)
Bursting with self destructive pathologies, Hindu fascism in the 21st century has no ancient roots or values, but is clearly home spun. A ‘pathological trap’ that has rapidly consumed the powerless and the angry of India. While glory (and hate) rapidly erodes democracy, it constantly amplifies grandiosity, money, violence, superficial charm, uber technology and the ludicrous fantasies of psychopath leaders.
Talk show hosts vomiting xenophobia and misinformation, backed by an army of online trolls known as ‘Godi (in his lap) Media’ and eventually placed as headlines by the “stenographers of the elite” (P.Sainath about Indian mainstream media-2011). What is worse, is the regime’s ravenous greed and utter lack of scientific and environmental regulations, instead attacking and destroying the remaining natural ecosystems, upon which future generations of Indians depend upon.
In “The Open Society and Its Enemies” Karl Popper warned us against utopian engineering and top down social transformation “by those who believe they are endowed with a revealed vision and truth” (Chris Hedges 2023)
The numbers merely amplify the “collective insanity” (Erich Fromm). Millions of men and women from India, as nationalist as they may be, do suffer from the same mental pathology. Yet the delusions and mass hysteria does not make for virtues, nor does it make them sane, and least prepared for collapse.
“India” - the name, identity and history will be remembered and cherished forever. Also for it’s diversity of geographies and people. By changing a country’s name, one does not alter it’s future nor the past.