Saffron Wokeism

Thoughts on the Revivalist Motives Behind Decoloniality

I grappled with an unexpected reality when I came to Canada a year ago.  My home country, India, is now increasingly known for its hard-right turn and the mainstreaming of Hindu Nationalism.  An Indian liberal looks around and is overwhelmed by all the hubris and chest-thumping rhetoric.  However, it always seemed that one aspect of this movement had somehow gone unnoticed by the Westerner.  Amidst all the self-glorification was a deep insecurity, rooted in the centuries-old hatred of the West.  After spending a year at a Western university, I realized with great discomfort, that this element has not been ignored, but has been translated into leftist jargon.  This was the unexpected reality I encountered: The Western far-left is, in significant ways, identical to the Hindu Nationalist right in India.

This might sound ludicrous to a distant observer at first glance, especially given the contrast between civilizational Muslim hatred in India and the Muslim fetish of leftists here, in the West.  But this is an exception to the rule.  When one looks at examples of fanatical Hindu indulgences and compares them to campus leftists here, there are unmistakable similarities in their ideas, approaches, and vision (or the lack thereof).  The name-changing of college buildings here, and roads, areas, or even entire cities there.  The discrediting of historical figures and the desecration of their monuments.  But, most importantly, the attachment to a puritanical idea of decolonization and indigenous superiority.  In India, this indigeneity is invariably ascribed to the Hindu population.  The example that best demonstrates this similarity is a recent episode in one of the zoos of West Bengal.  Two lions that apparently lived together, Akbar and Sita became the subjects of sudden and widespread outrage after Hindu activists of the VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad), expressed anger at the names of these two lions.  How can Akbar (a Muslim name), be with goddess Sita?! The activists received applause from all over social media.  The outrage even resulted in the suspension of a high-ranking forestry officer.  

Does this not sound all too familiar?  A silly and childish outrage can get the entire state ecosystem bending its knees to it.  The only difference between the anti-colonialism of leftists here and the Hindu nationalists in India is that the latter does not stop at hating the Brits, but also looks at the Mughal rulers that preceded the British with contempt.  

The original flag-bearer of anti-colonialism in India was the Indian National Congress (INC) or the Congress Party as it is more commonly known.  The beginnings of anti-Western sophistry in the country must be attributed to the Congress party and its leaders.  Trapped by Gandhi’s cult of personality and his grip on the Indian public, the Congress elite led India into a rushed independence from British rule and continued to push a one-sided narrative of colonialism even after independence.  However, an honest critic must acknowledge that in today’s India, the INC is the only upholder of Western values and liberal institutions.  They stayed committed to the Westminster style of parliamentary governance that has to this day, remained the greatest gift to India by Britain. Though he had his faults, Jawaharlal Nehru maintained a culture of healthy disagreement within the party, and this was arguably why the Congress split into two opposing groups during the Emergency of 1975, allowing the country to survive the suspension of civil liberties. The rights and freedoms that Indians enjoy, including the economic freedoms introduced in the early nineties through liberalization of the economy, can all be attributed to the Congress party alone.

Many people in the 20th century thought that the Hindu Nationalists of the time were too caught up in their admiration for European fascism to be engaged in real politics.  However, they were building a grassroots movement with a more comprehensive hatred of foreigners as their ideological foundation.  As the Congress’s pragmatism tried to push India more and more toward modernity, the Hindu Nationalists painted a picture of India retaining its colonial chains long after the British had left, under the Congress.  They started making significant strides into mainstream politics with the Ram Janmabhoomi movement after which claims of a glorious indigenous past started to yield electoral results.  

Since then, activists affiliated with Hindu Nationalist organizations have incessantly pushed the idea of Congress being the colonial heir of Britain.  Their movement has infiltrated every walk of Indian life, from family WhatsApp groups to decades-old public institutions.  University heads being appointed based on party credentials and school curriculums being changed to serve the new regime’s narrative offer an uncanny resemblance to what the woke leftists have done recently in the West.  

Tipu Sultan, for instance, has been on the receiving end of tireless bashing for a few years now.  He was a ruler in the South Indian former Kingdom of Mysore.  For most of contemporary history, he was celebrated as the ‘Tiger of Mysore’ for his military achievements, but now his Muslim credentials seem to have overtaken these achievements.  People in the very state that Tipu Sultan once ruled now celebrate his alleged murderers as their heroes!  I was reminded of this when I saw monuments of the American founding fathers being torn down during the Black Lives Matter movement.  Their ideals were no longer significant in light of their ‘whiteness’ that made them irredeemable antagonists.  Their ‘whiteness’ made them nothing more than symbols of oppressive colonialism.  In India, Muslims are similarly seen solely as foreigners and conquerors who ‘destroyed our temples’.

One starts to see an unmistakable convergence of these two movements with the resurgence of the concept of ‘Decolonization’. While the word has come into sudden vogue in the West in recent years, it has made an entry into the Indian political discourse as well. Novel voices such as that of J. Sai Deepak have come up with a more fashionable form of anti-colonialism that attracts the attention of young people.  This version refocuses its attention on the West, retaining its Muslim hatred as a sort of side belief.  Its language is indistinguishable from the decolonization jargon in Canadian universities.  The moral urgency of shunning everything that smells white, the apparent thrill they find in resurrecting old indigenous rituals and names, often even coming up with new ones; all of this has been imported more or less without any modification into the Indian context with Hindus seeing themselves as the beleaguered indigenous group.  The movement portrays itself as one of opposition to colonialism, but a closer look reveals its ugly intentions: the obsessive longing for a non-existent past of glory and purity.  This is, however, the very definition of fascism. Both the woke leftists and Hindu Nationalists are fixated on the sins of the White Man with religious fervor.  Both are ignorant of and ungrateful for the countless achievements of Western civilization.  In India, even the obvious benefits of British colonialism are smeared.  Politicians look at the vast railway system put in place by the Brits and say, “They did that for themselves”.  

There is an irony in the decolonization drama that is quite hard to miss.  All of the books and protests denouncing the repugnance of Western influence on indigeneity often do nothing more than reinforce the notion of narrative dependency that post-colonial societies have on the West.  It is almost as if they cannot make sense of their histories without a constant reminder to themselves of their relationship to colonialism.

There is a pattern that can be observed when one looks at all the countries that were faced with European colonialism.  Most societies that treated it as an unacceptable foreign interference and a breach of sovereignty subsequently descended into corrupt and authoritarian hellholes.  On the other hand, the societies that were involved in a slow transition from being colonial subjects into sovereign states became highly successful and developed economies.  Singapore and Hong Kong are arguably the most popular examples of the latter.  This pattern is even relevant in today’s world where the dominant Western imperial power is America. The U.S. has had a continued military presence in South Korea.  But somehow, this kind of thing only shows itself as a problem today in the Middle East where a large part of the population would rather have a catastrophe than American troops on its soil.  The more we examine these examples, the clearer the inherent clash between fascism and Western colonialism becomes.   

However, one must not conflate the concept of colonialism with that of conquest. These are two very different things, as Dr. Bruce Gilley of Portland State University points out.  Even a lay observer can distinguish between what the British did in India and what the Russians are currently doing in Ukraine.  A colonial power, especially the European kind, is interested in establishing a standardized form of governance based on a system of rules that make trade and industry possible under conditions of accountability.  A conquering power is only interested in accumulating territory and resources.  That being said, it is worth noting that indigenous conquests are often ignored and overlooked, while Western imperialism is regarded as a singular kind of evil by anti-colonialists.  

In my view, when there is a sensational push for territorial or moral independence and a mass movement built on the collective identity spawned by this claim, one must dig a little deeper into who the leaders of these movements are and what they aim to achieve.  As India wraps up another general election, it is imperative for the Indian public to critically assess their priorities: What truly matters in our lives? Who are the architects of our current well-being? And how can we refocus on essential issues without being swayed by grand narratives?

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