Saturday, July 20, 2013

An attempt to converse

on Indian politics

(certain chunks of this chat are removed)
---

Me
what modi debate you are are doing?

Xyz
listen his thobaad is everywhere
i want to puncture it
and all this middle class development morality
is fuelling his rise to pmship
ill be so ashamed if he becomes pm

Me
what is wrong in the middleclass development morality_

Xyz
its like citispace
doesn’t give a fuck about anything else but itself

Me
how is the situation any better now
'better' for the lack of a better word
may be - different
no basically i am just trying to understand
i am too bad at politics anyway
and i think its high time i educated myself
so asking...

Xyz
i dont care if it gets better
i have a moral problem with fascist hindu politics getting the upper hand
i would be ashamed of a country in which the majority voted for that
and believed in that

Me
u think hindu is being linked to some kind of developmental idea?
i dont think modi ever brings 'hindu' in his speeches - atleast the ones i have seen

Xyz
nope
i think being hindu is being linked to
being indian
well you should see the billboards all over the city
claiming that he is a hindu nationalist
he did an interview on a tv channel also which got facebooked a lot by his fans who lauded his "guts" at saying that

Me
but what happened to the whole debate on corruption?
accountability?
and blah

Xyz
i find all that very annoying

Me
i mean modi's speeches seem pretty rational

Xyz
yes of course
especially when he is talking about muslims

Me
:P

Xyz
luckily i am not a court of law
i don’t have to believe he is innocent because no one could prove that he was not involved in the massacre of muslims
the inventions of muslims as a race
as number one enemy
to rouse stupid chauvanistic sentiment

Me
yeah - that is a bit scary to think of

Xyz
the development - just look at sabarmati- bimals project
cited as a showpiece project
which is a bullshit project
lapped up by architects urban designers as a visionary project
which takes the water from the sardar sarovar to make a naturally perennial river into a waterfront for real estate development
that doesnt allow farmers on the edge to draw water from it even

Me
hmm - i didnt know about htat
but then, what is development after all?
and do we even need development?

Xyz
that is the best question

Me
because it is always going to be political

Me
it involves money and resources and big people and will

Xyz
this development rhetoric completely ignores all the other infill-healing type things we need
small things

Me
you think development is an induced desire?
or it is an acquired one?

Xyz
i think its one of your blindness things
same idea
what do you think

Me
well, i would like for everyone to have some basic infrastructure
i feel horrible when i read about lakhs of crores of rupees pocketed by some greedy idiots

Xyz
problem is the image of development
is not skywalks- sardar sarovar
etc

Xyz
there are so many statistics to prove all gujrat development is also a huge pr game
where bihar and other states do well on other indexes

Xyz
he is a chauvinistic hindutva promoter
what will happen to us as a nation

Xyz
the sabarmati project is one of the sickest projects ever
but people would call it development
please
i am an atheist
i can tolerate someone being religious
but to say India is a Hindu nation is disgustingly chauvinistic
and what is this hundutva that the bjp promotes
what will be the message to muslims

Xyz
and you have to see the new billboards all over the city
you havent heard him talk about muslims and family planning
or relief camps?
do a search for huindu nationalist
the problem is that all hindus cannot see that their claim to the nations identity can be very othering
that scares me

Me
othering to non-hindus?

Xyz
of course

Xyz
i really believe he is a murderer of muslims
if you hear the stories of what happened at cept
and the terror of it
and his smugness just angers me

Me
any record?

Xyz
everywhere
ask *** how he hid and trembled
ask *** how he was afraid to move to ahmedabad after he married a hindu girl

Me
hmm - that scares me

Xyz
it scares me too
and i love how all my hindu chauvinist friends who argue rationality can brand muslims as a race belive the constructed history of difference and conquest
can believe in bloated images of development and cannot see what muslims will feel
if we all put our votes to vote in a bigot
what it means to vote for a fascist
because we want a "clean slate"
STATE
sorry
like hitler
india will rise
under a fascist
kind of idea

Me
you think history like such repeats?
or would it if modi came?

Xyz
if modi came to power it would prove that we think of ourselves a a hindu state
and that is a crime
when the same people cry about islamic states

Me
but thats too metaphorical to claim

Xyz
no its not
it is the first thing
the development argument is just eyewash

Me
would hinduism intensify if modi came to power

Xyz
no it would just get its justification-

Me
ah i see - you mean to say his agenda is to "clean" the sate?
state*
his underlying agenda that is

Xyz
all his claims are like his pr agency's claim that he went and rescued 15000 pilgrims in a day
hilarious

Me
why didnt other states help then?

Xyz
please
is this an interstate competition?

Me
exactly - its not a competition
its about just caring for a single cause
why were resources not pooled togehter?

Xyz
so what

Me
well i feel not coming together in times of crisis is more political
more petty
was that not a massacre?

Xyz
we can go on about other parties and how states and how bad they are or were
no it was not a massacre

Me
no i am just trying to take a current example

Xyz
please do Not compare it to what happened in Gujarat
its not so trivial

Me
i thought it was pretty logical for all states to come together in this crisis

Xyz
the massacre happened at several levels
the entire development argument that states and the centre make are weird

Me
if massacre leads to death of people as an end result, then pretty much

Xyz
no
murder
and negligence are two entirely different things
states may not know better
and states may know better

Me
when you know people are dying and still not save them, it is almost as good as that

Xyz
the displacements of the sabarmati no one talks about in the name of development

Me
ah - is the pain from death by negligence different from that of murder

Xyz
just as no one talks about the hydel projects in uttarakhand
yes it is
if someone comes after you maliciously
to kill your kin
to kill, you
because of your religion
it is much more painful
it causes a historic scar
that your ineptitude to save people

Me
hmm
worthwhile thinking

Xyz
chl anyways
i sleep now

Me
hehe

Xyz
lock up the grills 

----
I request my co-chatter to contact me in case one finds this objectionable.
The above is only a record for the fact that - I learnt.

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