No, not a post about the burgeoning and semi-illicit trade in used underwear via ebay but about an ingenious response on the part of liberal Indians to the oppressive actions of a group of religious puritans (click here for original BBC story)!
There are many clichés to be spouted about India, but one that is definitely worth repeating is that it is a place of extreme diversity and contrast.
As a Westerner, it’s easy to think of India as having at the least the semblance of a homogenous identity; this would suit Hindu nationalists, who are trying to reconstruct India’s past, present and future as a socially conservative, Hindi speaking Hindu state. Unfortunately for Hindu nationalists, this simply isn’t the case.
In terms of its human geography India is at least as diverse as Europe. While the Indian states might not have quite the same sort of Westphalian heritage as their European counterparts (i.e. established histories as sovereign nation states), they are not lacking in their own languages or strong historical identities. In fact the present Republic of India, established in 1947 following the collapse of the British Empire, is the first time that all the states of the Eurasian subcontinent have been joined in a single sovereign state.
The diversity between India’s states is fairly easy to get to grips with. A cursory look at India’s post-war history reveals the fissures of language, religion and identity that have frayed and occasionally ripped the fabric of the political map of India; the partition of India and Pakistan and the two states’ proxy wars over Bangladesh and disputed Kashmir.
However, diversity and conflict run much deeper than relatively simple geographical fissures. India has never undergone the same sort of sustained and comprehensive transition to modernity endured by the West, though it has often been subject to this experience via the proxy of Western imperialism.
The European experience of the transition to modernity was as marked by the 100 years war as much as the renaissance, or by the gas chambers of Auschwitz or the ethnic cleansing of Eastern Europe by the Red Army as the foundation of the US Constitution and its Bill of Rights.
One product of the successive bloodbaths and bouts of persecution in Europe has been the creation of a system relatively homogenous, mature nation-states. These states have, by necessity, educated and developed their population en masse and have subsequently worked through resulting social conflicts and tensions between illiberal reactionaries and progressive forces who use past liberal developments to lever greater spaces for personal freedom.
India, on the other hand, has imported European modernity but in doing so the effects have been more greatly differentiated than in the West, where the phenomena took place organically. The educated urban young are part of a global post-modernity where sovereignty stems from the individual and not the collective, whereas the poorly educated, rural communities and the old are often trapped by pre-modern conceptions of what society should be (e.g. Islamic fundamentalist or conservative Hindu nationalist). The space between these post-modern and almost pre-modern groups is comparable to the more easily grasped space between Europe and India overall.
This particular story, about young women being attacked on camera for drinking in a pub provides a simultaneously amusing and alarming illustration of this diversity and conflict within an India that has been developing along different tracks and at markedly different speeds.
Alarmingly, the conduct of the Hindu nationalists in question, members of the Sri Ram Sena Hindu nationalist group, cannot be simply written off as ‘extreme’. Even within the literate and relatively empowered Indian online community, opinion on their actions relative to that of the ‘loose morals’ of young women in bars will probably be shockingly mixed to the liberal Western observer; in the wake of the murder of Scarlett Keeling, a 15 year old British girl, in Goa, international discussion on the British Daily Mail website was over-flowing with disgust, indignation and blame levelled at the deceased girl and her mother for having such low morals as to be somehow responsible for the crime itself!
Amusingly, liberal elements in India have responded to the bar attacks in a manner that should be an inspiration for liberals in the West who are besieged by authoritarian bigotry within and without of their governments; using Facebook to marshal a campaign to deliver large quantities of pink underwear to the doors of the Sri Ram Sena headquarters! Perhaps campaigners in the UK should adopt such direct tactics, but then I expect that would fall foul of some ‘Anti Terrorism’ law?
At the outset of writing this article I was thinking that the gap between progressive liberals and reactionary conservatives in India is much greater than that in the West. However, after reading the Daily Mail's article on the Scarlett Keeling murder, and the comments of Daily Mail readers, I'm no longer so sure. The difference in India is more marked, due to the differences in traditional versus modern dress, or because religion features more prominently across the divide, but in terms of narrow minded bigots versus open minded liberals, there isn't really all that much difference.
There are many clichés to be spouted about India, but one that is definitely worth repeating is that it is a place of extreme diversity and contrast.
As a Westerner, it’s easy to think of India as having at the least the semblance of a homogenous identity; this would suit Hindu nationalists, who are trying to reconstruct India’s past, present and future as a socially conservative, Hindi speaking Hindu state. Unfortunately for Hindu nationalists, this simply isn’t the case.
In terms of its human geography India is at least as diverse as Europe. While the Indian states might not have quite the same sort of Westphalian heritage as their European counterparts (i.e. established histories as sovereign nation states), they are not lacking in their own languages or strong historical identities. In fact the present Republic of India, established in 1947 following the collapse of the British Empire, is the first time that all the states of the Eurasian subcontinent have been joined in a single sovereign state.
The diversity between India’s states is fairly easy to get to grips with. A cursory look at India’s post-war history reveals the fissures of language, religion and identity that have frayed and occasionally ripped the fabric of the political map of India; the partition of India and Pakistan and the two states’ proxy wars over Bangladesh and disputed Kashmir.
However, diversity and conflict run much deeper than relatively simple geographical fissures. India has never undergone the same sort of sustained and comprehensive transition to modernity endured by the West, though it has often been subject to this experience via the proxy of Western imperialism.
The European experience of the transition to modernity was as marked by the 100 years war as much as the renaissance, or by the gas chambers of Auschwitz or the ethnic cleansing of Eastern Europe by the Red Army as the foundation of the US Constitution and its Bill of Rights.
One product of the successive bloodbaths and bouts of persecution in Europe has been the creation of a system relatively homogenous, mature nation-states. These states have, by necessity, educated and developed their population en masse and have subsequently worked through resulting social conflicts and tensions between illiberal reactionaries and progressive forces who use past liberal developments to lever greater spaces for personal freedom.
India, on the other hand, has imported European modernity but in doing so the effects have been more greatly differentiated than in the West, where the phenomena took place organically. The educated urban young are part of a global post-modernity where sovereignty stems from the individual and not the collective, whereas the poorly educated, rural communities and the old are often trapped by pre-modern conceptions of what society should be (e.g. Islamic fundamentalist or conservative Hindu nationalist). The space between these post-modern and almost pre-modern groups is comparable to the more easily grasped space between Europe and India overall.
This particular story, about young women being attacked on camera for drinking in a pub provides a simultaneously amusing and alarming illustration of this diversity and conflict within an India that has been developing along different tracks and at markedly different speeds.
Alarmingly, the conduct of the Hindu nationalists in question, members of the Sri Ram Sena Hindu nationalist group, cannot be simply written off as ‘extreme’. Even within the literate and relatively empowered Indian online community, opinion on their actions relative to that of the ‘loose morals’ of young women in bars will probably be shockingly mixed to the liberal Western observer; in the wake of the murder of Scarlett Keeling, a 15 year old British girl, in Goa, international discussion on the British Daily Mail website was over-flowing with disgust, indignation and blame levelled at the deceased girl and her mother for having such low morals as to be somehow responsible for the crime itself!
Amusingly, liberal elements in India have responded to the bar attacks in a manner that should be an inspiration for liberals in the West who are besieged by authoritarian bigotry within and without of their governments; using Facebook to marshal a campaign to deliver large quantities of pink underwear to the doors of the Sri Ram Sena headquarters! Perhaps campaigners in the UK should adopt such direct tactics, but then I expect that would fall foul of some ‘Anti Terrorism’ law?
At the outset of writing this article I was thinking that the gap between progressive liberals and reactionary conservatives in India is much greater than that in the West. However, after reading the Daily Mail's article on the Scarlett Keeling murder, and the comments of Daily Mail readers, I'm no longer so sure. The difference in India is more marked, due to the differences in traditional versus modern dress, or because religion features more prominently across the divide, but in terms of narrow minded bigots versus open minded liberals, there isn't really all that much difference.
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