Tag Archives: right wing

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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Ancient Indian Aristocratic Republics

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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:

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