Volunteers of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), during a so-called “Path Sanchalan” parade in Bhopal in 2016. (Source: Suyash Dwivedi)
From lundi matin (#434, 24/06/2024), an interview (largely in English) with the Indian anthropologist, Alpa Shah.
As a complement to this interview and to Alpa Shah’s work, we also share a series lectures, other interviews and links to articles. Her work invites a critical reflection on the understanding of democracy and the possibility of a kind of fascism cohabiting with electoral proceduralism.If there is any positive sense to the concept of “democracy”, then it must re-thought and practiced beyond the forms of “liberal-parliamentary” democracy.
Continuing our analyses of the present situation and our exploration of the specificities of the coming fascism, we received Alpa Shah, anthropologist at the London School of Economics for a fascinating interview on the political situation in India. In France, we know almost nothing about the historical and social structures of India. However, the intuition that drives us here is that this immense country of 1.4 billion inhabitants offers a certain image of the future, or, stated differently, the real material prefiguration of a composition between fascism and neo-liberalism.
For almost 100 years, India has been diffusely and in an almost underground manner occupied by a disciplined paramilitary organisation imbued with an explicitly (historically) Nazi and Mussolini worldview. This “hydra”, the RSS – Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh -, has marked out the territory with schools, training centers, camps; it has patiently infiltrated institutions, prefectures and power. It has rewritten school textbooks, organised the world’s largest volunteer movement and conspired with extractivist multinationals. It is a total, omnipresent and quasi-omnipotent enterprise irrigated by the violent principle of Hindu supremacism. Narendra Modi, the current Prime Minister who has just won his third term, was educated within it during his youth, the same Narendra Modi who was Emmanuel Macron’s guest of honor during the July 14, 2023 commemorations. Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) is based on a paramilitary organisation, an identity-based electoral logics and a visceral hatred of Muslims and natives. It binds itself with extractivist capitalist interests, controls the media and spreads terror among opponents with sweeping anti-terrorism laws. In her latest book, The incarcerations (Orwell Prize), Alpa Shah recounts the arrest of 16 intellectuals, poets, lawyers and researchers and their imprisonment for terrorism, without trial and based on fanciful evidence. It allows us to glimpse how fascism, electoral democracy, neoliberalism and the mass media spectacle can combine in new forms of dictatorship that remain parliamentary democracies. Husserl said in 1933: “It is possible that the Indians are becoming Westernised; but we will never Indianise ourselves.” It may be that in 2024, this judgment will need to be revised.
India: A 100 years of liberal fascist solitude
From lundi matin (#434, 24/06/2024), an interview (largely in English) with the Indian anthropologist, Alpa Shah.
As a complement to this interview and to Alpa Shah’s work, we also share a series lectures, other interviews and links to articles. Her work invites a critical reflection on the understanding of democracy and the possibility of a kind of fascism cohabiting with electoral proceduralism. If there is any positive sense to the concept of “democracy”, then it must re-thought and practiced beyond the forms of “liberal-parliamentary” democracy.
Continuing our analyses of the present situation and our exploration of the specificities of the coming fascism, we received Alpa Shah, anthropologist at the London School of Economics for a fascinating interview on the political situation in India. In France, we know almost nothing about the historical and social structures of India. However, the intuition that drives us here is that this immense country of 1.4 billion inhabitants offers a certain image of the future, or, stated differently, the real material prefiguration of a composition between fascism and neo-liberalism.
For almost 100 years, India has been diffusely and in an almost underground manner occupied by a disciplined paramilitary organisation imbued with an explicitly (historically) Nazi and Mussolini worldview. This “hydra”, the RSS – Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh -, has marked out the territory with schools, training centers, camps; it has patiently infiltrated institutions, prefectures and power. It has rewritten school textbooks, organised the world’s largest volunteer movement and conspired with extractivist multinationals. It is a total, omnipresent and quasi-omnipotent enterprise irrigated by the violent principle of Hindu supremacism. Narendra Modi, the current Prime Minister who has just won his third term, was educated within it during his youth, the same Narendra Modi who was Emmanuel Macron’s guest of honor during the July 14, 2023 commemorations. Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) is based on a paramilitary organisation, an identity-based electoral logics and a visceral hatred of Muslims and natives. It binds itself with extractivist capitalist interests, controls the media and spreads terror among opponents with sweeping anti-terrorism laws. In her latest book, The incarcerations (Orwell Prize), Alpa Shah recounts the arrest of 16 intellectuals, poets, lawyers and researchers and their imprisonment for terrorism, without trial and based on fanciful evidence. It allows us to glimpse how fascism, electoral democracy, neoliberalism and the mass media spectacle can combine in new forms of dictatorship that remain parliamentary democracies. Husserl said in 1933: “It is possible that the Indians are becoming Westernised; but we will never Indianise ourselves.” It may be that in 2024, this judgment will need to be revised.
Alpa Shah, “India’s Red Belt”, BBC-Radio Four.
Alpa Shah, “We have a great deal to learn about nature, gender and joy from indigenous communities”, The Times of India, 23/01/2021.
Alpa Shah, “David Graeber Reminded Us of the Political Value of Anthropology: It makes other worlds possible”, Novara Media, 03/09/2021.
Alpa Shah’s own website is a rich source for her work. Click here.