I wonder what Ritu would say about this one? IT’s a long feminist critique of the Gujarat massacres, in which the author attempts to understand why torture and mutilation of women, rather than the older-style abduction/rape/impregnation, was such a big part of what happened there. I don’t know enough about the situation to know what to think of Nussbaum’s ideas in this article, titled Body of the Nation, but I am curious to know what Ritu thinks of it. Though I do think that the Hindutva/Nazi thing is, well… hmm. I suspect every group of psycho fucks (Hindutva leaders, Nazi propagandists, Medieval kings and their court members, Ku Klux Klanners, Chinese mafia… they probably all are similar in certain ways. Choosing the Nazis makes for an interesting but perhaps ultimately limited argument, though it does bring to mind an interesting story I read by Harry Turtledove where the Axis won World War II and the Nazis took over the British Empire. Once they got to India, they just executed Gandhi at almost the first chance. Hmmm.
As with several of my posts today, this comes from Arts & Letters Daily.
I can’t access this article, neither through the link, nor through the web-site.
Still, if she compares them to the Nazis, or says that the Hindutva ideology resembles theirs the most, she is only reporting the facts. She is not even choosing the Nazis, the RSS did that all by itself. They have portraits of Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels hanging in their offices. They often quote these people, not in derision, but as people who need to be emulated. They work for an Aryan nation in India [the term is a Sanskrit word, its meaning garbled beyond hope by the Nazis, and I’ll not even touch what they did to our Swastika] and some of the more radical ones think that what Hitler did to the jews is what Hindus should do to the muslims in India. They dream of an Akhand Bharat, an undivided India, and are consequently in favour of invading and occupying Pakistan and Bangladesh. The writings of their founding members are sprinkled with praise for the Nazis…
Still wish i could read the article though. Given the question you mention, I’d assume that torture and mutilation paid a huge part, rather impregnation and rape, is because they would not want more muslim, or half-muslim, progeny. These people are pathological in their hatred for the muslims. They *really* do consider them sub-human, people who need to be wiped off the face of India, before they wipe all the hindus off.
Hmm, I finally got through….
All that stuff about objectification of women as the nation etc, while not wrong, isn’t absolutely right either. Simply because there is no uniformity in the treatment accorded out to women. Things change from village to village and state to state. That look into sexual aggression was a bit too disturbing for me – it is not something I like dwelling on, but again, it doesn’t seem all that far-fetched. It does explain some of the behaviour, comments and actions, that I have witnessed and never understood.
Their fear of sexuality and insistence on ‘purity’ is very much a fact. They are rather Victorian in their attitudes, and have no idea of what Indian heritage and culture mean in terms of sexuality.
See, the facts discussed in the article are not misleading. Their sexual, psychological connotation may be right as well. It is not something I know all that much about.