"Toxic Nationalism and the Diaspora" in THE GOAN EVERYDAY (30 October 2016)

As the date of the U.S. General Election draws nearer, Trump and Hindu Nationalists find favour in one another.

Goans can breathe a sigh of relief that the once most famous South Asian American Republican, the arch-conservative Dinesh D’souza, has all but slunk away from the public eye, owing to the fact that he was found guilty of campaign finance violations. Instead, while that son-of-Goan-soil attempts to shill yet another book about what he believes to be wrong with American politics, from the comfort of the Internet, other South Asians have taken up the mantle of embarrassing subcontinental people in the homeland and abroad.  

Enter the Republican Hindu Coalition (RHC). In an event they hosted for U.S. Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump in New Jersey a fortnight ago, the RHC put on a clownish display that melded Bollywood, Islamophobia, and patriotism. Though several Indian American attendees were surprised to see Trump at the spectacle, which was billed “Humanity Against Terrorism”, perhaps their first clue that something wasn’t right should have been that the programme was presented by an organization that calls itself the Republican Hindu Coalition. Describing the affair in The Concourse as one where “Hindus and Trump Rallied together in a Xenophobic Fever Dream” (21 October), Giri Nathan marvels at how the “fundraiser for ‘victims of terror in America and around the world’” managed to “somehow set a new standard for surreality in the present election cycle, with a Donald Trump keynote speech bookended by hours of Bollywood song and dance”.

But not to be outdone by his hosts, Donald Trump upped the oddness ante by proclaiming, “I am a big fan of Hindu [sic], and I am a big fan of India!” As Eesha Pandit remarks in an article for Salon (22 October), Trump would be given to such effusiveness, since “[t]here are more than 4 million South Asian Americans currently living in the United States, and approximately 67 percent of them, or 2.7 million, are U.S. citizens. Additionally, South Asian-Americans are one of the most politically active ethnic blocs”. Trump went on to announce that if he was elected, “the Indian and Hindu community will have a big friend in the White House”.

Undoubtedly, the lynchpin in this unholy alliance between overseas Hindu nationalism and Trump’s pro-Hindu/Indian American stance is the Islamophobia both sides share. In The Guardian (17 October), Rashmee Kumar quotes Dalit activist Thenmozhi Soundarajan as saying of the RHC-Trump event that its “celebration of Diwali suggested that attendees were mostly upper caste…” In addition to a lamp-lighting ceremony, the audience was also treated to some sort of performance where make-believe terrorists and U.S. soldiers duked it out. The show was very much in keeping with Trump’s virulent anti-Muslim campaign, but it also speaks to Hindu Indian nationalism which posits Muslims as the other to the Indian nation.

That this then also appeals to the Trump-supporting Indian American, even if a miniscule demographic at just seven percent, bears witness to the perpetuation of toxic Hindu nationalism within the Indian nation-state and its diaspora. Further, in seeing India and Indian Americans only as Hindus, Trump additionally borrows from the community’s own self-presentation as manifestly upper caste and the authentic arbiters of Indianness.

Multiple incidents of post-9/11 xenophobia in American have shown that time and again racists cannot (and do not want to) tell the difference between Muslims, Arabs, South Asians, Latinos, Sikhs, Hindus, or anyone ‘foreign-appearing’ for that matter. Despite this, that the RHC would court a man whose supporters wish to “Make America Great Again”, which is euphemistic for making it White Again, is proof of a dysfunctional relationship. Equally enamoured, Trump has just released a campaign video in which he attempts to woo Indian American voters by speaking in Hindi. Maxwell Tani reports in Business Insider (27 October), that “[t]he ad prominently features an image of [Indian Prime Minister] Modi as well as Trump's take on Modi's popular campaign slogan, ‘Ab Ki Baar Trump Sarkaar,’ or, ‘This Time, We're With Trump's Government’”. Given Modi’s own history of drumming up Hindutva, this is not just the stuff of coincidence.

As can be seen by the commentators I have cited above, many South Asian Americans have actively voiced their disdain of the RHC ‘fundraiser’ and Trump’s odious pandering to the religiously nationalist sentiments of Indian American voters. In a similar vein, a video crusade titled #VoteAgainstHate has begun making the social media rounds in an effort to educate “long-time Republicans and unaffiliated voters, particularly of immigrant heritage, to vote against hate by not voting for Donald Trump”. In the version of the video aimed at South Asian American voters, several younger generation Americans of subcontinental heritage address their elders and remind them of their immigrant hardships and desires for a better life. “You guys are the American dream”, one of the speakers states emphatically in a plea to those who fail to see that Trump’s America is a dangerous one. 

But while the video does well to point out to South Asian Americans that casting their lot with Trump would be a disservice to immigrants, it does so by relying on the unquestioned belief in the homogeneity of the South Asian American community, particularly along the lines of class privilege as epitomised by the constant references to the American success stories of this demographic. Not only is this an overstatement which essentially reads Indian Americanness and, likely, caste privilege, onto the diversity of South Asian America, but it also doesn’t delve into the very elitism and Islamophobia in the community that has drawn Trump to it. It is not until this community begins to ask difficult questions of itself about its investment in caste privilege and nationalism that change can occur.

From The Goan.

"When Academics Play Tourists" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (24 January 2015)

While in Goa for a conference this past December, my brother-in-law enquired if it was the India Ideas Conclave that I was there for. My protests to the contrary were quick, due to the nature of said event. The conference I was in Goa for had barely found mention in any media in the state, while the Conclave could be seen advertised on the main thoroughfare with flashy billboards. Online, it was being avidly discussed on Goan listservs, because the Indian right wing had unabashedly proclaimed it as a gathering of intellectuals and politicians who sought to distance themselves from Nehruvian socialism. Several affiliates of Hindu fundamentalist organisations were present at the occasion, as were members of the BJP. This betrayed the Hindutva leanings of the affair, revealing it to be more than just about politics and the economy. So, no, I corrected my sister’s husband; I was most assuredly not in Goa for that conference, but another. Except, upon actually attending the Re-Imagining Theory Conference, organised by the Forum on Contemporary Theory (FCT) at the International Centre, Goa (ICG), I wondered if there was something to my brother-in-law’s conflation of the two meetings.

To be fair, the Conclave made no bones about why it had chosen Goa for its deliberations, having hired a five star hotel for the get-together. Even though the rise of religiously fundamentalist organisations in the state can readily be charted over the last few years, it was evident that the right wing had settled on Goa more for its location than in recognition of its zealotry or political importance. In comparison, the theory conference, which gave the impression of being a serious academic affair, not least because of its inclusion of such high profile speakers as Gayatri Spivak and Arjun Appadurai, quickly let that veneer slip. Was it a foregone conclusion that as the site of choice for the academic conference, Goa was to be relegated to being merely a service venue rather than an intellectual space? One is inclined to believe so, given the quaint little note the organisers sent participants in a logistical email before the conference began on 21 December, 2014. It said: “Enjoy Goan hospitality and return home refreshed in body and spirit”.

That the sole purpose of Goa and Goans should be that it and they exist primarily as purveyors of hospitality rather than as intellectual participants in the programme, as such a missive implies, should give one pause. And if the notion that Goa was where one comes to be serviced rather than to be of service had not been articulated clearly enough by the aforementioned note, then it was hammered home in the conference’s opening session. In it, the organisers attempted to theorise the space of Goa as one that could be characterised through the idea of “liquidity”; they clarified their meaning by underscoring Goa’s proximity to the ocean and by hinting at the liberal availability of alcohol. When FCT held its annual conference in Goa in 2007, similar comments were made by the organisers, who then referred to Goa being a “spirited” location. But at least then FCT had made some attempt to be more cognisant of the region itself and to engage it academically. For instance, at that earlier instalment, the discussions were held at Goa University and, additionally, there was a session convened to discuss Pundalik Naik’s Acchev/The Upheaval (2002).

That seven years later at the ICG, Goa University’s presence at the conference could be marked by the official appearance of just one faculty member from that institution is just as damning of the university as it is of the organisers. Consider, too, that the conference’s only recognisable panel on Goa was laughably labelled “Spatializing the Local: Kolkata, Goa, and the Locality of Space”. As a participant on this panel, I was thoroughly confused as I wondered how the disparate locales of Goa and Kolkata were to be bridged during the session – an impossible endeavor, I was to discover. I was even more concerned as my presentation was about the Goan diaspora and the Portuguese Empire rather than about the ‘spatializing’ of Goa. But no matter, as it was quite clear that this was of no consequence to the organisers.

If the India Ideas Conclave represented the country’s religious right wing and the Re-Imagining Theory Conference India’s secular liberals, to both the meeting point was Goa. The conference I attended concluded on Christmas Eve. To Goans, Catholic or not, Christmas is a significant date not only due to the religious prominence it bears for some, but also because it is emblematic of the socio-cultural fabric of the region. To have an event end right before this occasion highlights the conference’s aim to use Goa as a destination with the added promise of local festivities. As with the right wing gathering, the pre-Christmas academic conference cast Goa as the religious other to India, fixing it once more as the nation’s pleasure periphery. Perhaps Goa’s failing tourism industry should take note of the emerging market in fundamentalists and academics.

From The Goan.