Category Archives: politics

World Leaders React to Death of Castro

I won’t be doing this kind of post often. This isn’t even related to South Asia at all except that I’m starting the list with South Asian leaders, but I’m posting it because I was annoyed at how bad the media is at doing this extremely simple job. I couldn’t find a single complete list of immediate reactions of foreign leaders to the death of Castro. They all exclude some major leaders, chop up the quotes, or even make comical errors like this ABC article which refers to “Rashtrapati Bhavan, the president of India…”  So here I’m presenting all the quotes I could find from all world leaders on this topic in as complete a manner as possible. If you find an error or one I missed, add it in the comments and I’ll edit the post.
Reactions to Fidel Castro’s death from Narendra Modi, Maithripala Sirisena, Imran Khan, Vladimir Putin, Dmitri Medvedev, Michael Gorbachev, Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, Justin Trudeau, Xi Jinping, Bashar Al Assad,  Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn, Pope Francis, Rafael Correa, Enrique Peña Nieto, Nicolás Maduro, Salvador Sánchez, Michelle Bachelet, Michael Higgins, Alexis Tsipras, Francois Hollande, Seyed Ali Khamenei, Jean-Claude Junker and Ban Ki-moon:
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Fidel Castro and Indira Gandhi. Image Source: India.com

Narendra Modi (India):
“Fidel Castro was one of the most iconic personalities of the 20th century. India mourns the loss of a great friend.” “
“I extend my deepest condolences to the Government & people of Cuba on the sad demise of Fidel Castro. May his soul rest in peace.”
We stand in support with the Cuban Government and people in this tragic hour.”
(And President Pranab Mukherjee also said: Heartfelt condolences on sad demise of Cuba’s revolutionary leader, former President & friend of India, Fidel Castro)
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Deshbondhu Chittoronjon Dash (দেশবন্ধু চিত্তরঞ্জন দাশ)

 

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Portrait of Deshbondhu. Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

Recently I was reading over the “Presidential Address of Desabhandhu C. R. Das at the thirty-seventh session of the Indian National Congress held at Gaya on 26th December 1922” also known as “Freedom Through Disobedience.” I kept highlighting key passages for my own reference, but I thought that I’d post them up here for those interested in such things but who don’t have the time or desire to read the full 75 page speech. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes here come from that speech. But if you are interested in reading a lot, you could also check out this other collection of his speeches, “India for Indians” which fleshes out some of the details of Deshbondhu’s worldview which his Gaya speech leaves out. This will be somewhat relevant to the Ancient Constitution post I made earlier.
Deshbondhu (title meaning “friend of the nation”) seems like a much more lucid thinker than practically any other Indian independence leader who has risen to prominence in the historical memory of Indian independence in the west. In many ways he ends up approaching conclusions which in the west are associated with radical federalism, anarchism, classical liberalism, or proto-fascist conservatism. If this collection of ideas seems incongruous to you, you might want to check out this essay on anarchism and nationalism called Anarchist Integralism: Aesthetics, Politics and the Après-Garde which although hostile to integralism, shows how all these ideas are related to one another. Ultimately I think that Deshbondhu’s Swaraj ideology, like the preceding Swadeshi Ideology in its Bankinchandra through its Tagore forms, as well as Subhash Chandra Bose‘s unnamed ideology, and pretty much all forms of Bengali and Indian “culturalism” including Hindutva are all Indian manifestations of integralism. Deshbondhu’s iteration seems to be a more anarchic, libertarian, and internationalist iteration of Indian integralism than the average (though not as free spirited as Tagore).

Like Burke, and the liberals I mentioned in the Ancient Constitution post, Deshbondhu believed that rule of law had to be subservient to some other concept of law (shall we call it natural law?) in order to justify obedience:

Why are the Indian Criminal Law Amendment Act 1908 and the Prevention of Seditious Meetings Act 1911 to be retained on the Statute Book? For the preservation of law and order? They little think these learned gentlemen responsible for the report that these Statutes, giving as they do to the Executive wide, arbitrary and discretionary powers of constraint, constitute a state of things wherein it is the duty of every individual to resist and to defy the tyranny of such lawless laws. These Statutes in themselves constitute a breach of law and order, for, law and order is the result of the rule of law; and where you deny the existence of the rule of law, you cannot turn round and say it is your duty as law-abiding citizens to obey the law.

p. 14

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Ab Ki Bar Trump Sarkar

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Image Source: Quartz India

This recent spate of “right wing” victories which includes Brexit, Trump, and the European nationalists is part of the same global phenomenon which produced Modi.

It almost seems too obvious to point out how similar Trump and Modi are but I haven’t seen many people in my circles saying it. Probably because I hang out mostly with Americanized NRI liberals in the Brahmin class (as per Moldbug’s schema, not Chaturvarna). These people love Modi and hate Trump and want to avoid finding the obvious similarities and connections. There are some articles tracing out the connections. Mostly in condemnatory tones. But some sources are saying the exact opposite as well, which is totally ridiculous. So lets go over some of the basics.

Victory of the Edgelords: The first major similarity is their negative public branding, and the material causes for why that sort of branding was possible in the first place. Trump and Modi both are both considered bigots by their liberal opponents (particularly in English language media which has been totally captured by leftist establishment forces), and have garnered support from right wing radicals. In Trump’s case this mostly centers around his rhetoric, though he is also favored by far right groups like (numerically and politically insignificant) KKK or the (much more numerous and significant) Alt-Right. In Modi’s case it derives from his institutional connection with the RSS and Hindutvadis in general, and his role in the Gujarat riots. In both cases this seemed to have damaged their reputations and election chances at the time. They were considered outsiders with hickish attitudes by their own liberal countrymen, and scary nationalists by neoliberals in other countries. Remember how under Obama the US denied Modi’s visa? Well Trump narrowly escaped the same fate at the hands of the UK parliament. Ultimately in both cases this politically correct negative branding failed to stop the candidate, as what the media establishment portrayed as a negative and bigoted campaign was interpreted very differently by the voting public.

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India’s Ancient Constitution, Part 1

Did India have an Ancient Constitution worth respecting, or not? Did the British uphold it, or destroy it? For a Libertarian or Burkean Conservative Hindu, these are important questions to consider dispassionately. The answer actually matters. If India had an Ancient Constitution which was destroyed when the British came, then much of India’s existing constitution, a combination of British laws and the arbitrarily imposed theories of Ambedkar, is an usurpation of the ancient rights and privileges primordial to the land and the race. The very basis of the Indian state is in question in this case. On the other hand, if India had no such Ancient Constitution, or if it was destroyed by the Mughals and restored by the British, then the period of British rule was a period of liberation from Oriental Despotism wherein India was Brought Into History as Hegel might have said. This is a somewhat false binary, but I present it anyway to show some of the dramatic potential conclusions we can come to.

Its also important to consider what such a concept as an Ancient Constitution really even means. Is it a principle of abstract justice which is universal? Or do different societies create internally valid social compacts which might differ from one another in legitimate ways? Or is this an incorrect way of framing the question?

I’m not really going to try to definitively settle the historical question in this post. I’m still doing research on the topic and will put out my full view on it later if I think I gain enough information to make such a judgement. I’ll instead just briefly discuss what the idea of an Ancient Constitution meant to a few thinkers in the context of India. I’ll look at Bose, Burke, Roy, and Naoroji.

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Portrait of Subhash Chandra Bose. Image source: quotesgram.com

Bose:

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