Pankaj Mishra has a really bleak take on India.

[VizagRocks]

Hits all the right notes in this interview. Basically says that India is a lost cause as a country. I agree. Just 8 months living in that country, in the run up to 2014 elections pushed me into a depression.

https://www.thecairoreview.com/q-a/the-modernity-trap/

CAIRO REVIEW: How is India changing under Modi?
PANKAJ MISHRA: Pretty dramatically, and I think that the consensus is pretty much for the worse. The ideological movement that he leads is remaking the country, really with great speed, occupying the state, colonizing the state, filling its institutions with loyalists—every institution, from military to cultural, to head of the film, television training institute, wherever you look there are loyalists and Hindu nationalists in place, so in a way it is a kind of takeover that the Muslim Brotherhood can only dream of. So obviously the country’s culture, shared national culture, everything has been altered, in just two years. [That] is not to say these changes had not been in the making for awhile, but I think the arrival of Modi himself has accelerated that, so you see a much more hardline Hindu nationalism, or Hindu supremacism, which is very belligerent, very harsh in its postures towards Pakistan, towards Indian Muslims, towards Kashmiris, towards minorities too, towards liberals—towards anyone they can identify as rootless cosmopolitans, so the same kind of pathologies we saw in Europe in the nineteenth century are flourishing in India right now. And economic growth remains jobless, remains highly uneven, and as long as it does, the ruling classes are going to find new enemies to identify, to persecute, and that’s what they’ve been doing, so you see all the classic signs of incipient fascism in the country today.

[VizagRocks]

CAIRO REVIEW: Modi, as governor of Gujarat, neglected to stop the massacre of Muslims in the 2002 riots, yet afterwards his political position was only stronger. Has the BJP used anti-Muslim violence to further its rise?
PANKAJ MISHRA: It’s always done that. One certain way is to identify the enemy, which is the Muslim, and to say this is the person undermining the unity of India, undermining our value systems, this is the true danger, also allied with various dark forces of terrorism internationally. So it’s always used these metaphors to advance its political ambitions, and they’ve done so more dramatically in the last few years.

The reason why Modi won despite that taint of Gujarat, I think it’s the same reason why Trump won despite everything he said—everything that, for any other political figure, would have been destructive of his chances. The time had come for the voters, for the masses, to express their rejection, to move away from what you and I think of as everyday ordinary morality. I think what we’re seeing today on a large scale is a kind of breakdown of ethical constraints of older ideas of morality [which held] that if someone is a serial groper, or boasts openly about rape, or is a brazenly racist figure, then you don’t actually vote for him. All those constraints have been thrown out in the last few years, but we saw that process first in India.

[VizagRocks]

He basically says that Indians have never recovered, and may never, from colonialism, and the traumatic division of India, and is slowly losing its morality.

Hindutva goons are just speeding up the process of its destruction.

[BulletBaskar]

10 minutes ago, VizagRocks said:

He basically says that Indians have never recovered, and may never, from colonialism, and the traumatic division of India, and is slowly losing its morality.

Hindutva goons are just speeding up the process of its destruction.

Ok

Nice 

[LordOfMud]

No use...no change in Indians mind set......on a positive note lets see after 10 more decades......

[Bhai]

27 minutes ago, VizagRocks said:

He basically says that Indians have never recovered, and may never, from colonialism, and the traumatic division of India, and is slowly losing its morality.

Hindutva goons are just speeding up the process of its destruction.

who is pankaj?

[Bhai]

Just now, LordOfMud said:

No use...no change in Indians mind set......on a positive note lets see after 10 more decades......

elagu bratiki undam antava 

[LordOfMud]

1 minute ago, Bhai said:

elagu bratiki undam antava 

Bhai....I know u wanna see change in your fife time nor in my life time, I hope so but its not gonna happen.....sorry Bro.......

[Bhai]

3 minutes ago, LordOfMud said:

Bhai....I know u wanna see change in your fife time nor in my life time, I hope so but its not gonna happen.....sorry Bro.......

[VizagRocks]

8 minutes ago, Bhai said:

who is pankaj?

He's an UK based Indian author. He used to sound like a gasbag in the 2000s, but now seems to have mellowed down and become more thoughtful.

 

[VizagRocks]

4 minutes ago, LordOfMud said:

Bhai....I know u wanna see change in your fife time nor in my life time, I hope so but its not gonna happen.....sorry Bro.......

India has regressed so much, that the only hope is more and more oppressed people rising up to fight the state.

Even well educated Indians have fallen into Modinama now. Its disgusting to talk politics to a lot of Indian people these days.

[LordOfMud]

2 minutes ago, Bhai said:

Ide 200 yrs old samethaa in India.......Chandamaama story......vaypaaku thinaga thingaa teeyagaa untaadi....

[kreole]

6 minutes ago, VizagRocks said:

India has regressed so much, that the only hope is more and more oppressed people rising up to fight the state.

Even well educated Indians have fallen into Modinama now. Its disgusting to talk politics to a lot of Indian people these days.

So who are these oppressed people?

[VizagRocks]

4 minutes ago, kreole said:

So who are these oppressed people?

anyone who lost their land to the state.

anyone who are part of groups that are constantly harrassed by the general public and the state

workers who are squeezed with non-existent implementation of labour laws 

People who are paid less than sustenance wages.

People who cant find employment.

these people together will constitute more than 50% of India. 

[VizagRocks]

plus add people who are malnourished, and go to bed hungry. These people can't fight a revolution, since they are too weak. So Indian state is lucky.