to understand politics you need to understand people (part 1)

seeing the Mid East through the lens of India

I believe there are many different entry points into any subject matter. for example, the world of economics. my fiancé lives in this world and entered by means of practicality. he is a practical man, and he likes for operations to be as such. to him the beauty of Finance is in the elegance of efficient operations. but there’s more. he believes if you understand how money flows through a system, be that a household, company, or country, you understand the fundamentals of that system and what will make or break it.

for me, my entry point to any subject matter is almost always human behavior. when I want to understand the economy, I want to understand the psychology of consumers, investors, and regulators. it is this same curiosity through which I enter political conversations.

for the last year I have been learning about the historical, religious, political, and geo-political context of Israel-Palestine. what I am still missing from my research is a deeper understanding of the Palestinian and Israeli people.

I know there is Palestinian and Israeli literature, stories, and interviews, which I will continue to tuck into, but what I find curious is Western media, despite its extensive coverage of the genocidal war, has provided very little insight into the humans of the story.

as I tuck in I discover more layers

given what is happening in the region right now, there is a moral urgency to decry military decisions and grieve the nearly 40,000 Palestinian and 1,195 Israeli dead. yet the thousands of miles between me and them affords me, a third party, something more than grief. the distance allows a grotesque curiosity about human behavior and psychology.

unfortunately, my entry point to the issue has been through Westerners, none of whom live in the region, who, while knowledgeable about historical, economic, and political aspects of the story, lack a social and cultural understanding. if you don’t understand the social and cultural aspect of a story, you miss the heart and soul of the people in the story. and without people, you have nothing.

I say this because I suspect a similar situation has arisen in the West regarding the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan. for the few who know of it, it is the history of India without Indians. indeed British and Indian leadership were playing chess, gambling the lives of common folk, but at the local level there was an abundance of political activity, planning, and imagination as to what people wanted for themselves and their communities.

the messiness of separating India into India and Pakistan

Violence instigated by the political leaders of the country was itself integral to the political process that everyone knew had been brought into play in the past and could always be brought into play when bargaining and compromise failed.

this quote is written by American political scientist Paul R. Brass in his paper The Partition of India and retributive genocide in the Punjab, 1946-47; means, methods, and purposes. it is about the years preceding and following Partition.

the year was 1947. my home state of Oregon was trying to decriminalize drugs, my current home of San Francisco was signing the Treaty of Peace with Japan, and thousands of miles away the British partitioned the British Raj into the Dominion of India and the Dominion of Pakistan. few in the West are aware of this historical event. my own knowledge came from snippets in movies like The Legend of Bhagat Singh and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (I can vividly picture the scene where young Milkha Singh’s family is slaughtered before his eyes).

From this point, the principal historical issue has become why the mass migrations and the horrendous and atrocious violence that accompanied it occurred, and who was responsible for it.

I am not a Partition expert so I will refer you to the Partition Archive started by Dr. Guneeta Singh Bhalla and maintained by an oral history nonprofit in Berkeley with a registered trust in Delhi. what I am here to illuminate is how a mostly political understanding of Partition would miss all the human activity that led up to the event and all the human activity that has followed it.

who was responsible for the violence?

during Partition, the mostly Muslim western part of British Punjab went to Pakistan, and the Hindu and Sikh eastern part went to India. it is reported that almost no Muslim, woman, child, or man, survived East Punjab and no Hindu or Sikh survived West Punjab. the resulting communal violence, instigated by religious and political leaders, was unspeakable horror.

according to Brass:

the British authorities, the leaders of the Indian National Congress, and Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League…all three participated to a greater or lesser extent in the creation of a communal discourse of Hindu–Muslim relations characterized by difference, antagonism, and the potentiality and actuality of communal violence… all three were responsible for deliberate or misplaced actions that contributed to the major occasions of violence that did occur before and after partition.

Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, began his politial career advocating for Hindu-Muslim unity but later believed Indian Muslims needed a separate state to avoid possible marginalization.

Historians of Muslim politics in north India have a list of significant dates and events that go back to 1857 or even earlier that represent steps on the road to Pakistan, opportunities lost for a Hindu–Muslim settlement, and the decisive moment or moments when Pakistan became inevitable.

what progressive Indians get wrong

in progressive Desi spaces it is common to hear “we were more united until the British divided and conquered us”. the room murmurs in agreement but an uncomfortable truth remains that the Cabinet Mission Plan failed because of distrust between the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League.

in 1946 the Cabinet Mission plan was a final attempt at Indian unity. the British appointed Lord Mountbatten to oversee a resolution between Congress and the Muslim League who quickly determined a resolution was impossible and the demand for Pakistan was inevitable. on June 2, 1947 Mountbatten presented a partition plan to Indian leaders and on June 3 it was announced on All India Radio.

what has happened since the two-state solution?

since 1947 there have been three wars between India and Pakistan. in 1971 the third war resulted in the creation of a third new state, Bangladesh. since 1947 there has been an insurrection in Jammu and Kashmir, former princely states now union territories of India. from 1981 to 1991 Sikh militants in Punjab (border of India-Pakistan) fought the Indian state and some 25,000 lives were lost. the issue of religious, or communal, violence in India continues and there seems to be no end in sight as India chokes and sputters in the grip of Hindutva. the situation feels to me as intractable as Israel-Palestine.

what does any of this have to do with Israel-Palestine?

at this very moment American progressives in the West, not all but many of whom may not have rigorously engaged with the issue of Israel and Palestine, are forced to consider an ancient question about a far away place to which many of us have never been: is an ethnocracy sustainable or does it inevitably breed intolerance? can an ethnocracy be democratic? can intolerance ever be contained or is “an injustice anywhere a threat to justice everywhere”?

why does any of this matter?

the founder of the Parition archive Dr. Bhalla writes in a blog post,

As Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis we don’t often think of ourselves as being heirs to the largest mass refugee crisis in recorded history. The fact is that we have not learned to identify with one of the most defining events of the 20th century. As a result, we have failed to harness important lessons from it (read blog)

I don’t believe there is any greater project than the project of peace. as Brass writes in his paper it is easy for any region of the world to fall into a “mortal cycle of revenge and retribution” and what it can lead to is genocide or genocidal war. after all, “genocide is a process that develops, that is not unique, that has not yet seen its end, and whose general aspects, therefore, must be unveiled”.

but how do any of us, the peaceful majority, contribute to violence? to answer this question I will point you to some writing that I never tire of reading — Dr. MLK Jr.’s letter from a cell in Birmingham:

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I know this is a tough pill to swallow. as someone with a busy personal life, I am perfectly capable of finding politics a burden. in college and my early 20s it was a different story, but now that I have a husband, nieces, aging parents, a community to build, and a family to plan, I don’t always have the time or energy for politics. and yet we must make time. we must.

only a one-state can be a democracy

at Stanford we had what were referred to as ethnic-themed dorms and I was a proponent of them. to quote the Ujamaa resident fellow, “this is not segregation. it’s congregation.” on a predominantly white campus, students of color have a right to spaces where they can relax, learn, and commune, so that they can thrive at Stanford.

but now I wonder, would it have been better to only have community centers and not separate living spaces? would it have been better for Stanford to focus on integration and eradicating intolerance and ignorance, from the extreme to the micro, rather than creating race-based homogenous living spaces?

today America, my own country, teeters on the precipice of a right wing Executive Branch.

meanwhile, in my mother country of India, retired historian Aditya Mukherjee referrs to Narendra Modi and his political allies as “communal fascists”.

“This is something that Jawaharlal Nehru had predicted,” Mr. Mukherjee said, referring to India’s first prime minister. “He said if fascism ever came to India it would come in the form of majoritarian Hindu communalism. That is exactly what is happening.”

Ashutosh, the author of a book called “Hindu Rashtra” (Hindu Nation), said the appeal of Hindu supremacy was rooted in the failure of communism, which used to have mainstream appeal in India, and in a nostalgia for a Hindu golden age.

many Indians believe “if Hindus can come together and Muslims can be defeated, then India can regain its past glory,” said Mr. Ashutosh. sounds familiar to these American ears.

“I will also argue that Trumpism is best understood as a secularized version of white Christian nationalism,” says American sociologist Philip Gorski of Yale University.

The affinity between religious conservativism and right-wing populism antedates Trump and extends to many parts of the world including: Orban’s Hungary, Modi’s India, Bolsonaro’s Brazile and Duterte’s Philippines. The affinity is perhaps less obvious and also less important in Western Europe, but even there, neo-populists such as Matteo Salvini, Marine Le Pen, and Geert Wilders have frequently positioned themselves as defenders of “Christian civilization”.

I am tempted to say ethnic and religious conflict is a unique beast in Asia but last Monday was Columbus Day in 16 American states and Indigenous People’s day in the rest. around the world we are one human race battling tribalism and its insatiable thirst for violence. and yet “we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”