September 12: Day 1 of my fast, day 566 of our chain.

Just finished watching the pre-election debate between the leading candidates ahead of the upcoming German national elections scheduled on Sept 26. Their issues were digitization, prevention of money laundering, climate change, etc. but the ones I found most interesting were:

1. Determining their Covid failures, and ensuring that these would not be repeated in the future. None of the candidates ever mentioned that Germany was one of the most successful countries at managing the virus. The focus remained on dealing with structural deficits (European self-sufficiency and effective communication/coordination between agencies in charge) that the virus had exposed.

Would Modi ever allow a sane analysis like that?

2. They each took a hard line against party members who had indulged in racist remarks. In the absence of a public apology/retraction, the party members were expelled.

When can we expect politics that takes a clear stand against caste/communal/racial discrimination in India?

I know both my questions are ridiculous, given how far removed they are from the political reality of India. Maybe that alone is worth pondering for a start?

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #FreeSanjivBhatt #ResignAmitShah

September 13: Day 2 of my fast, day 567 of our chain.

I was not able to attend the Dismantling Global Hindutva conference, but I am incredibly pleased that it took place. It is important to distinguish the RSS’s brand of Hindutva from Hinduism.

Hinduism is an imperfect, evolving philosophy of social organization – deeply meaningful and nurturing to those favored by it, and simultaneously invoking justified bitterness and a deep desire for redress and reparation from those who suffered from it. Hinduism thus spans the whole gamut in what it means to different people, and this is a reality that those favored by Hinduism can no longer continue to ignore. We are long overdue for that close, hard look in the mirror. It is high time we actively commit ourselves to correcting the multitude of ignominious sins that have received social sanction in the name of Hindu heritage.

However, just like its unearned privileges, the burdens of the sins of Hinduism are also an accident of birth. They are rarely intentional: privilege protects from pain on the one hand, but also blinds one to another’s pain, on the other. I, with my Hindu heritage, and many others like me, have been guilty of having been blind, and what helped navigate through and emerge from that blindness was the ruthlessly honest light shone by those who were suffering from that pain. This ongoing dialogue is truthful, compassionate, and helps us come closer to each other by doing the slow, hard work of finding practical ways of sharing privilege so that we can all be protected from debilitating pain, freeing us all up to live up to our natural potential. This, to me, is Hinduism – a varied mix of the good, bad, and the ugly – and the direction it takes, like humanity itself, lies in all our hands.

Hindutva, on the other hand, is a militant ideology based on cultivating evil to consolidate the unbridled power of a favored few over the many. By idolizing the Manusmriti, it seeks to harness the wellspring of evil – the dark side – in Hinduism to achieve its nefarious goals. If we want to reform Hinduism, we cannot start without training our sights on Hindutva first.

Let us combat Hindutva to defang the venom within Hinduism!

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #FreeSanjivBhatt #ResignAmitShah #ResignModi

September 14: Day 3 of my fast, day 568 of our chain.

I am reading John Stuart Mill‘s 1859 essay “On Liberty,” and it is astounding how much his commentary on England over 160 years ago is applicable to India today:

“Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and still is vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society itself is the tyrant—society collectively, over the separate individuals who compose it—its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates: and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tyranny of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development, and, if possible, prevent the formation, of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual interference; and to find that limit, and to maintain it against encroachment, it is indispensable to a good condition of human affairs, as protection against political despotism.”

Say no to the majoritarian tyranny and despotism of Hindutva!!

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #FreeSanjivBhatt #ResignAmitShah #ResignModi

September 15: Day 4 of my fast, day 569 of our chain.

I don’t have a lot to say today, but here’s a graphic showing our decline on the sustainable development goals (SDG) index (equivalent to an increase in poverty) across the board – to remind myself why we need to fight Hindutva and do everything within our means to elect a government that cares in 2024.

https://www.downtoearth.org.in/…/how-india-remains-poor…

#FastingAgainstFascism #ChainFastingForPeace #ResignAmitShah #FreeSanjivBhatt #ResignModi

September 16: Day 5 of my fast, day 570 of our chain.

I am still waiting for a five day fast during which nothing blatantly outrageous happens in India. I thought this time would be like that, but no – the Enforcement Directorate (ED) descended on Harsh Mander‘s home, office, and his homes for children today, to investigate charges of “receiving hefty funds used for illicit activities like religious conversion.”

These are clearly baseless harassment tactics and aren’t the first to have be deployed: Delhi police had accused him of “hate speech” during anti-CAA protests in 2020, and attacks on Harsh’s organizations, ongoing since October last year, have been proven to be baseless.

Such attempts to harass and intimidate people fighting for human rights and healing while the government goes about shredding our social fabric to pieces only prove the Modi government’s executive overreach and relentless abuse of our democratic institutions.

https://scroll.in/…/delhi-activist-harsh-manders-home…

Most of my cousins still say nothing has really changed in India, bad things are just being done by a different party. I don’t understand what they’re talking about. This is not the usual political opportunism. If previous political parties had gone around crushing dissent like Modi does, the RSS would never have existed and Modi would never have risen to power. And this is the tragedy of India – our patriarchal, narrow-minded, casteist upbringing never allowed us to truly appreciate the meaning and value of democracy. It only remained a bookish concept to be regurgitated for getting through school.

I’ll close these five days of fasting with a quote by Orwell:

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

#ChainFastingForPeace #FastingAgainstFascism #FreeSanjivBhatt #ResignAmitShah #ResignModi