Since the start of the Covid pandemic, the Indian government's missives contained a large number of war imagery. Doctors and other essential workers became “Covid warriors” and the Indian government embarked on a War on Covid, vaccines became “weapons to defeat the virus” and the virus itself is an “invisible enemy” which the government is fighting on a “war footing”.

The BJP government's fascination for war and war imagery is well documented, first there was the “war on black money” rhetoric used during the enfeebling demonetization, then came “the surgical strikes”, “war-like fortifications” to protect Delhi against protesting farmers. There is almost a perverse affliction with war with the current regime, as it amplifies the power they have over the people without actually having to do nothing. It also satiates its core voter base and the outliers as it shows that the country is finally doing something, war is not a state of inaction but extreme kinesis, it creates an illusion of progress where no progress exists.

Golwalkar, widely regarded as the ideological architect of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh drew inspiration for the Hindu-state from Italian fascism, specifically Mussolini’s organization of fascist paramilitary forces. In comparing the supremacy of Hindus in India to the supremacy of the Aryan race in Hitler’s Germany, Golwalkar wrote, “To keep up the purity of its race and culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging of the country of the Semitic races— the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here .. a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.”

These ideological roots have permeated into the national discourse where war is used as a euphemism to quell any public backlash. Want to question the government over the vaccine policy? We are in an unofficial state of war, we shouldn't expend energy on finger-pointing right now. The state of war is an excuse to collectivize losses while any good news is because and only because of the Dear Leader, whose kindness brings glory to us Indian people. The Dear Leader is at the same time a master strategist, a shrewd politician, and a saintlike figure. Case in point is the length of his beard which seems to exude an idea of statesmanship without anything concrete to show for it.

War imagery also eliminates any nuance that is required in complex problem-solving. It replaces meticulousness with loud bangs, which becomes rhetoric in itself. By playing the “war” card, the BJP further strengthens its brute force persona popularized by the Uri and Balakot attacks in the past years. It is a reflection of the violence-obsessed society we have become, wherein the fight against real violence we infer imagined massacres. The causalities of this war imagery are however real. It is the people of India, whose orphaned bodies burned to ashes in overworked cemeteries and clogged the Ganga. The government's apathy is visible in the statistical PR exercises it does to save face, not to mention its poor war-waging ability as visible from the haircuts it took with the Chinese confrontation in Eastern Ladakh last year.

The war imagery is a distraction from the larger problem facing India, poor public infrastructure, and a middle-class governmental perspective that views and treats its large swathes of poor sections through its elitist lens and religious nationalism. War imagery is a sign of societal decay – one which relegates intellectual operations to a lower class of thought systems, where being loud is smarter than being smart itself.

#RSS #BJP #India #war #covid

The news filtering from India leaves me hopeless for a country that I am confused to call mine. Having not lived in India in the last three years, each passing day the country goes farther away from the place of imaginations and dreams. I can understand that this physical untangling with a home country can create a dissonance between perception and reality. When I was in India I experienced the place through my eyes and the media reports acted as an accompaniment to refract experiences through.

Now, living in a country thousands of kilometers away one is left with chaotic tweets and servile media to base one's idea of the country upon, without the tangible element to infer the veracity of information. The internet spaces are polarized by the ruling right and the ever warring Left, with a heavy mix of pseudoscience and the general lackadaisical anything goes attitude that is in political vogue at the moment. Official sources of information have become the “battlefields” of misinformation, a place to use mind-numbing statistical exercises to always show India as the best, the largest and the greatest in the world. It does seem in the past years there has not been a single government initiative that cannot be described by a haloed superlative.

This is not the India I remember, where I had access to books and information that encouraged me to pursue knowledge and ask questions. The issues of superstition and blind religiosity were always around in the family but never overflowing at the cost of education. Now science has been politicized as an object of the West and whatever “Indian culture” is supposed to mean has taken center stage. Family whatsapp forwards are filled with recipes for various Ayurvedic potions and concoctions that are supposed to keep Covid at bay. This is a reflection of a macroscopic trend nationwide. No one questions their efficacy, otherwise wouldn't the rising caseload and deaths be already under control?

There has been a collective amnesia towards logic right in the upper echelons of power in the Indian government that has trickled down into the populace through propaganda and social engineering. Any slight against the dealing of the virus is a warring statement against the country itself, to question is to be unpatriotic, while being a nameless mass is encouraged as the greatest duty one can currently do as a citizen.

It is not ironic that the adherents to the BJP/RSS's idealogy are called bhakts (devotees), reason has been long transplanted with worship and the hard rigor of reasoning filled with the ease of blind faith. Why care to understand science when pseudoscience is much more accessible? The land that has enabled me to read and reason has now been replaced by one that demands silence. This thought system has now permeated across all sections of the Indian population and there is little prospects of things to change.

Countries morph all in character all the time and what is happening to India is an abject denigration that has frayed all the pride and character amassed in the past decades. India is shining, but in the bright flames of uncounted bodies and in the dull orb of a fascist reality whose future horrors I do not wish to imagine.

#India #Covid19 #RSS #fascism #BJP

The protests happening around the implementation Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens pan-India are a joyous sight for Indians. The last six years the populace has remained largely complacent with the promises made by Modi and his cohorts but it looks like even the people are calling out B.S. on the openly anti-Muslim rhetoric pursued by the government in power.

The protests are being condemned because of the torching of public property and the pelting of stones against policemen, it is vital to remember that the mob has paid for the buses and policemen through their taxes and it is their right to exercise a protest in a form they deem fit. As for the policemen, it is an interesting development indeed that just a few weeks ago when the alleged rapist/murderers in the Disha case were “encountered” the police were elevated to the level of heroes. This shows the deficiencies in public memory and one must use it as a cause to vilify further against the Indian Police Force that remains corrupt and reliable as always. It is also worth to remember that the police are not there to propagate healthy protests but maintain the status quo as requested by whichever government that is in power.

The police do need some help in training themselves and is important that some stones get thrown at them. But the anger here is not towards the Government of India or its servants but towards the parent organization that fosters hate amongst people by dividing them along communal lines. The BJP is a relatively new entrant to the political field but the root of the problem is the RSS with its open “Hindu Rashtra” ideology that propels that BJP forward. Fighting against the BJP and the police will do little but pulling the mask off RSS is the need of the hour and the methods to do so are simple.

Order some ground beef and take along some cows. Gather all the people willing to eat a delicious beef biryani or beef fry and go the nearest RSS shakha, slaughter the cow and start cooking. If anyone comes close by attack with the raw beef and in more threatening times give the RSS a taste of its own medicine, Gaumutra and the eternal droppings of the Holy Cow. It is a joke that in modern India to stifle people one doesn't need guns or bombs but a simple cow and people hungry enough to slaughter it and eat.

The killing of the RSS must be done in a bottom-up fashion, inflaming the lower rungs and getting a response from the higher ranks and constant badgering at their ideals, their past and their plans for the future of the country. Their flags should be burned along with their books, their existence is both a grave threat to Hinduism and the other minority religions as they are a fascist organization hiding behind the iconography of the Hindu religion.

The chaddis need a good beating, team up and gang the next group you see. The only way to save the plurality of the Indian democracy is to remove the fascist and nepotistic elements and retain the essence that has been mandated in our constitution. The Congress is of no help either but that is a different question. Indians now have to fight for their freedom yet again, this time to be not fooled by organizations willing to exploit stagnant masculine anger diverted towards minority groups. The hydra has a thousand different heads and it is vital to rip its heart apart. Burn them down as you would burn your worst fears and protest till you go hungry, there is an abundance of cows for you to eat once the hydra is dead.

#CAAProtests #India #Hindutva #RSS