Tag Archives: conservative

Deshbondhu Chittoronjon Dash (দেশবন্ধু চিত্তরঞ্জন দাশ)

 

Portrait_of_Chittaranjan_Das.JPG

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

Continue reading →

Ab Ki Bar Trump Sarkar

ap_16132301815691-1.jpg

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.

Continue reading →

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.

Subhas Chandra Bose .jpg

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

Bose:

Continue reading →

Ancient Indian Aristocratic Republics

Mahajanapadas_(c._500_BCE).png

Map of the 16 Janapadas. Source: Wikimedia Commons

I was reading about non-monarchical forms of government in ancient India. Really I was interested in what they call the “Republics” of ancient India. But that concept is a bit misleading. It has all sorts of Eurocentric connotations, and implicit associations with democracy, egalitarianism, populism, etc. It has those implicit connections even though many European republics were essentially similar to the Indian ones insofar as they had restricted franchise and were basically aristocratic or oligarchic in nature, or merchant guild-based. In Sanskrit they were called Janapadas, Gana Sanghas, or a few other more esoteric words. 

I suppose one major difference between Indian and European republics is that there is  European republics frequently had agents which were said to “represent” the people, implying that “the people” were the sovereign ruler of the society. “The People” generally had an aristocratic definition, but also had the capacity to get quite plebian. It is difficult to tell who was regarded as sovereign in some of the following Indian examples, but if I had to guess I would say that as a general rule the ruling Kshatriya clan, or confederation of clans, was regarded as sovereigs. That said, in other literature I also saw evidence to suggest that sovereignty was also sometimes vested in individual villages, districts, or constituent guilds or corporations which themselves sent representatives to the council. Without copies of their constitutions we don’t know for sure, but I don’t evidence of directly democratic institutions. And why would we? Political egalitarianism is an alien concept to the subcontinent.

Given the existence of these republics really amazing that we still think of India as a static land of “Oriental Despotism.” For instance, we think of Buddha as a “Prince” when really he was a prince only insofar as he was the son of the elected leader of the Shakya Republic (to be fair, Buddhist literature inflates Sudhodana’s reputation which confuses this issue as much as the Hegelian/Marxist historiography). Republics are also central to the history of Jainism. Anyway the point is, India had ancient aristocratic republics and that is cool.

Below is a large chunk of Chapter 1: Forms and Types of States from the book Aspects of the ancient Indian polity, by Narendra Nath Law,  (Oxford, The Clarendon press, 1921.) Apologies for the typographical errors, I tried to clean up the ones which inhibited meaning:

Continue reading →