I don't know what to do/think about the BJP in general. I mean, I think they're bad, but beyond that? They seem fully entrenched, and even if they lose an election at some point*, the ethnic/religious rivalries and hatreds are unleashed and not going anywhere any time soon, as evidenced by this awful story.
*not clear to me whether they've skewed governance the way Hungary has, but as I understand it, it's still reasonably democratic over there
It's pretty frustrating because India's dominant ideology for so long was more or less universalistic, and they did not encourage this sort of thing like the BJP now does, often if not always quashed this kind of violence. (They could still be pretty violent against any groups perceived as a threat to the state.)
But Congress also became a pretty sclerotic, patronage-based party, lots of other problems. I think most of the young college students around me when I visited for a few months in 2009 would have preferred BJP win that year's general election. And it seems like the US kind of needs India to balance against China. I, too, don't know what comes next.
It's just a depressing situation all around, really.
It's not Hungary, but that seems to be the direction of travel. I share the general gloom, but it's not actually clear to me how much this particular shitshow is actually BJP, rather than just India (especially NE India) being India, maybe with added BJP venom.
maybe with added BJP venom.
Yeah, that's part of what I meant by "unleashed". Nothing in that article suggested BJP support (complicity, maybe), but when your whole message is unalloyed Hindu nationalism, there's going to be collateral damage, even if Modi never thought Christian indigenous would be targeted).
Not exactly the same thing, but: clearly Trump doesn't care about homo-/transphobia the way he cares about racism/xenophobia, but he told his supporters to nurse their every grievance and act out every hatred, and here we are.
I wonder how helpful it is to see things through the lens of parts of the rest of the world starting to go through a similar process to what the Muslim world went through during the past 50 years? Or is that too pessimistic?
The part about the state-majority ethnic group being granted Scheduled Tribe status by a judge so the minorities it's oppressing effectively don't have that status, sure seems like the kind of thing that would come with the tacit consent of a national government with no interest in helping disadvantaged groups. (It looks like the Supreme Court is taking a dim view of that decision, though.)
7: Yes, the precipitating incident being an attempt to give a status meant for historically underprivileged minorities to a historically privileged Hindu local majority group has a very BJP feel to it even if the national leadership wasn't directly involved.
9: I believe the most recent one was in 1946 -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miskolc_pogrom
Also a simmering civil war in Burma, with one side at least partly Karen rather than Burmese. Villages converting to Christianity (itinerant Welsh evangelists I guess? but not Methodists?) after losing a war is quite a backstory.
To Hungary, these people show up occasionally in Czech news, no idea if they're more than biker gangs who like flags and uniforms. They dislike Romany, definitely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magyar_G%C3%A1rda
To be fair I have no idea who appoints the Manipur High Court justices who made that decision.
(one Wikipedia later)
Looks like it's the Union President, with confirmation by the Chief Justice of India and the state Governor. Which probably means a complex overall process - but both the President and the Manipur Governor have been BJPers since the mid-2010s.
And this seems very Orbanist: the Indian constitution was amended in 2015 to add a recommending commission for judicial appointments, but the government seems to have stated that (not quite stated in those amendments) the President's action on those recommendations is ceremonial and the actual decision is made by the government.
When will they learn to settle their differences like westerners, by measuring dicks.
11: The Germans were stopped sooner.
I sometimes feel less worried about the prospect of China being the next superpower than about India being the one after that.
-- India is one of only two countries post-1945 to use military force to invade and annexe territory and have that annexation generally accepted by the international community, which kind of seems like a bad precedent. (The other one doesn't have any further territorial ambitions beyond what it already controls; India definitely does, in Kashmir and possibly elsewhere as well.)
-- India is not good at alliances or at getting on well with its neighbours. (To be fair, neither is China, but India's worse.) Its relationships range from "been at war with you four times, now in nuclear standoff" to "invaded you" to "cold war-style standoff with fistfights" to "persecuting your minority refugees" to "airdropped supplies to your separatist terror groups". The best it gets is with Nepal, where they're generally friendly despite an unresolved border dispute that occasionally end up with people being shot dead.
-- China is run by an autocrat with totalitarian leanings, which is bad. India is run by an immensely popular racist demagogue with personal ties to massacres of religious minorities, whose political party had a violent paramilitary wing which staged massive parades of thousands of brown-shirted martial arts fanatics - which I can't see as a positive sign.
-- China is now on the wrong end of its demographic curve which is going to limit its growth and its military potential. India's still growing demographically, it has a lot of room for productivity expansion, and it has a lot of potential military recruits.
-- India seems far more likely than China to go down the "internal political problems? Let's distract everyone with a short victorious war!" route, which is of course entirely certain to work and never go wrong in any way.
-- Chinese cinema is quite nationalistic but Indian cinema seems to be a constant stream of historical grievance and nationalist posery. Not good.
India is one of only two countries post-1945 to use military force to invade and annexe
I count at least three.
Nepal, where they're generally friendly despite an unresolved border dispute that occasionally end up with people being shot dead.
Or other disputes, resulting in protacted blockades.
"invaded you"
Which one are you counting here?
18: the other one I was counting was North Vietnam; who else is there?
The invasion was of Bangladesh (then East Pakistan).
Thinking about it, I should also have included Tibet by China. Good point.
Though I don't think that's nearly as settled as the Indian and Vietnamese cases, mind you.
2 was me.
18.2: Ah. I was counting that among the Pakistan wars, since AFAIUI the invasion of East Pakistan could reasonably be characterized as a liberation. Don't know how the Bangladeshis at large see it, but IIRC most of its ruling dynasties were persecuted under W. Pakistani rule.
19: Indonesia>West Papua.
"generally accepted by the international community" has to do quite a lot of work. Morocco>W. Sahara? PRC>Aksai Chin? Israel>Golan? Russia>Crimea? Not accepting a line on a map isn't nothing, but it isn't a lot either.
Indonesia - West Papua wasn't an invasion using military force - the Netherlands handed the territory over.
Handed it over for the purpose of a plebiscite, in which a handful of notables chosen by the Indonesian army voted almost literally at gunpoint. "Invasion" in the common-sense understanding? Probably not, I won't argue the point.