[Reader-list] Who's a Minority?

[pratap pandey]

Dear all,

In the entire GUjarat debate, it is being assumed that
there exists a minority and that there exists a
majority. People don't exist, except in so far as they
belong to either a minority or a majority. There seems
to be no other form of solidarity possible in India,
except to belong to the minority or to the majority.
NO other form of solidarity exists, except in being
understood in terms of "identity", reduced to
HIndu/self and Muslim/other. While The fascists have
played this game very well in GUjarat, it seems those
who are against what has happened in Gujarat are
unaware of getting trapped in the same game:

(the same, brutal, insistence on sentimentality; the
same, idealist, lack of historical perspective; the
same, equally idealist, immature [as Max Weber
understood, in his inaugral lecture] appeal to not
politics but ethics.)    

I have just read Sucheta Dalal's posting. It breaks my
fart...er, heart. She ends:

and end impunity for orchestrated
violence against Indian minorities.

This is the last phrase of her posting. The "Indian
minorities" portion gives the whole game away. 

Exactly who is a minority in India?

The muslims who have suffered "genocide", or the
intellectuals who do not want to give a name to this
event?

The muslim community in Ahmedabad, or the community of
enemployed labour (that is both Hindu and Muslim) in
Ahmedabad?

The educated middle class, or the struggling-to-get
educated classes, a social fallout of the political
franchise to vote?

Sucheta Dalal's report divides this country into only
two ways of being: she proceeds, sentimentally, with
this assumption. How can her report challenge the BJP
if it works within their scheme of things?

Sucheta Dalal assumes that there exists an Indian
Majority. How can she assume this? Isn't she playing
into the smug BJP game of giving the self an ultimatum
of being "this" or "that"? This is precisely what the
facsists want, the simplification of the lifeworld
into white and black.

Who belongs to this Majority? Is the majority she
asumes an "ethical" majority, or a "political"
majority?

How can you you assume a majority? The moment you do
so, you have been drowned by the darker currents of
identity politics. Which the fascists want you to swim
in (and hopefully keep swimming in, or drown).

I am not saying: let's rise above this (as if we were
levitation dudes). I am merely saying: let us produce
an unsentimental knowledge of Gujarat. We are
intelligent enough!

yours,

pp          

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