Political Line newsletter: Violence as political currency
(This is the latest edition of the Political Line newsletter curated by Varghese K. George. The Political Line newsletter is India's political landscape explained every week. You can subscribe here to get the newsletter in your inbox every Friday.)
Violence within national societies and among nation states marks a collapse of order
A lawmaker in Minnesota, U.S.A., was killed and another injured in an act of political violence in the past week. The suspect had a list of 45 elected officials, all Democrats, who he wanted to eliminate, say reports. U.S. President Donald J. Trump survived two assassination attempts during the last election campaign. In December, the CEO of United Healthcare was shot dead, again in an act of alleged political violence. The suspect had apparently been upset with the unfairness of the U.S. health insurance sector. Mr. Trump's Attorney General has decided to seek the death penalty for the suspect. The suspect hails from an affluent family, and was disenchanted with the U.S. political order.
American public opinion is divided over the case, as many people sympathise with the accused. In India, instances of political violence — mob lynching particularly — are being reported frequently. Historically, India and the U.S. have been pulverised by violence: the Civil War, Partition, and other events. Those were violent churns that would eventually lead to the expansion of democracy in both countries.
The current era of violence is markedly different from popular violence in the past, I feel. Violence earlier was the birth pang of democracy; what we currently witness is the result of an erosion of democracy that we thought had brought an end to violence as the currency for political exchanges.
The violence around us today denotes a breakdown of order, among nations and within nations. Rules do not apply, and the 'might is right' principle is back with a vengeance. The distinction between state and non-state actors has been erased. This violence is a statement by political actors that they do not trust the rules any longer.
See the following examples. India says there is no distinction between the Pakistani state and the terrorists it supports; India's drive against Maoist insurgents and illegal immigrants in the country is admittedly beyond the enforcement of law. Law often delays the enforcement of order, according to this worldview. If Bangladeshi migrants have to be expelled through a deportation process, it will be too time consuming; so let's just 'push' them back.
Israel accuses its rivals of committing terrorism, but it has little regard for any rules of democracy, order, or even war. Israel publicly threatens to kill the leader of a fellow member of the United Nations, Iran. In the U.S., the Trump administration is stretching the scope of law — if not entirely ignoring it — to deal with illegal immigration.
We are in an era where violence is not merely happening, but there is a celebration of it as a virtue, or even a moral duty of the patriotic, the faithful, and the seeker of justice.
Eric Hobsbawm, writing in 1994, (The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991) was already revising his earlier opinion, which was only a decade old then, about the future of humanity in the 21st century. While avoiding any definitive predictions, the historian of capitalism, modernity, and nationalism was, in the mid-1980s, hopeful that the kind of large-scale wars of the 20th century would be improbable in the 21st. But he would revise that opinion soon.
'There is less reason to feel hopeful about the future than in the middle 1980s, when the present author concluded his trilogy on the history of the 'long nineteenth century' (1789-1914) with the words: 'The evidence that the world in the twenty-first century will be better is not negligible. If the world succeeds in not destroying itself [i.e. by nuclear war], the probability will be quite strong.''
Federalism Tract: Notes on Indian Diversity
Digging in
The political battle over the antiquity of Tamil culture, between the State government and the Centre continues. The Centre controls archaeology in the country, but the State of TN has taken proactive measures to insert itself into archaeological excavation. The Centre wants the lead author of a report to rewrite it, and the State has objected to these efforts as a move to deny Tamils their due.
Talking of antiquity of cultures, the Centre is supporting efforts to decipher the Indus Valley script, which remains an enigma a full century after it was discovered. The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) will host a three-day international brainstorming conference in August, which will assemble scholars working on the question.
Finding the foreigner
It is one thing to theoretically argue that illegal immigrants should be deported from the country, but identifying the foreigner in India is not an easy task. BJP governments in different parts of the country are targeting Bengali-speaking citizens, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has said. She said residents of the State with valid documents were being labelled illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.
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