Violent Majorities: Indian and Israeli Ethnonationalism

121* Ajantha Subramanian on the Caste of Merit (EF,JP)

Before she became the host and star of Violent Majorities, the RTB series on Israeli and Indian ethnonationalism, Ajantha Subramanian sat down with Elizabeth and John to discuss The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India. It is much more than simply an historical and ethnographic study of the elite Indian Institutes of Technology. Ajantha talked to JP and EF about the language of “merit” and the ways in which it can conceal the continuing relevance of caste (and class, and race) privilege–in India, yes, but also in American and other meritocratic democracies as well.

The wide-ranging discussion explored how inequality gets reproduced, passed on and justified. Caste–often framed as a fundamentally “Eastern” form of difference–not only seems to have a lot in common with race, but also shares a history through colonial, plantation-based capitalism. This may explain some of the ways “merit” has also made race (and class) disparities invisible in the United States. This helps explain ways in which dominant groups excoriate the “identity politics” of those seeking greater access to privileged domains, and claim their own independence from “ascriptive” identities–while silently relying on the privilege and other hidden advantages of particular racial or caste-based forms of belonging.

The companion text for this episode—Privilege by Shamus Khan–addresses very similar issues in the elite high school where he was a student, teacher and sociological researcher, St. Paul’s School. Khan traces a shift over the past decades (we argued a bit about the time frame) from a conception of privilege defined by maintaining boundaries, to one based on the privileged person’s capacity to move with ease through all social contexts.

Discussed in this episode:

Ajantha Subramanian, Shorelines: Space and Rights in South India

Anthony Abraham Jack, The Privileged Poor : How Elite Colleges Are Failing Disadvantaged Students

Nicholas Lehmann, The Big Test

John Carson, The Measure of Merit

Anthony Trollope, Phineas Finn

Jennifer Ruth, Novel Professions

Lauren Goodlad, Victorian Literature and the Victorian State

Donna Tartt, The Secret History

Sujatha Gidla, Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India

Listen and Read Here

120 Violent Majorities Roundup (Ajantha, Lori, JP)

Ajantha Subramanian and Lori Allen turn from hosts to interlocutors in an episode that ties a bow on our Violent Majorities conversations about Indian (episode 1) and Israeli (episode 2)ethnonationalism. Along with John they discuss commonalities between Balmurli Natrajan’s charting of the “slippery slope towards a multiculturalism of caste” and Natasha Roth-Rowland‘s description of the “territorial maximalism” that has been central to Zionism. The role of overseas communities loomed large, as did the roots of ethnonationalism in the fascism of the 1920s, which survived, transmuted or merely masked over the subsequent bloody century, as other ideologies (Communism and perhaps cosmopolitan liberalism among them) waxed before waning.

The conversation also examines the current-day shared playbook of the long-distance far-right ideologies of Zionism and Hindutva. And it concludes with a reflection on the suitability of the term fascism to describe such organizations and their historical forebears as well as other contemporary movements.

Mentioned in the episode:

Snigdha Poonam’s recent book Dreamers investigates the “angry young men” engaged in Hindutvite attacks, including those who are economically and educationally marginalized, as well as those who resent what they see as their wrongful decline from privilege.

Yuval Abraham’s “The IDF unit turning ‘Hilltop Youth” Settlers into Soldiers” is an investigation into how Israeli settlers from violent outposts are being inducted into a new military unit responsible for severe abuses of Palestinians across the West Bank. (However, in describing Israel’s “hilltop youth” as coming from “lower rungs,” Lori feels she may have overstated their marginalization. Although one report describes Israel’s hilltop youth as young men recruited from unstable homes, others point to the Israeli state’s unwillingness to stop them.)

Daniel Kupfert Heller, Jabotinsky’s Children, on the rise of the transnational youth movement, Betar. A correction: Jabotinsky was from Odessa (modern Ukraine), but much of his support was in Poland.

RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) as the first institutionalization of the Hindutva project and a living remnant of 1920s fascism.

The BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) arises as the political wing of the RSS and comes to prominence around the destruction of the Ayodhya Mosque.

Lori’s interview with Zachary Lockman in MERIP about historical changes in American Jewish attitudes towards Zionism.

Ajantha refers to the argument in Natasha Roth-Rowland’s recent dissertation (“‘Not One Inch of Retreat’: The Transnational Jewish Far Right, 1929-1996”), that the turn towards Zionism is linked in the US with a turn away from Communism as another transnational movement, waning as Zionism was waxing.

Lori mentions the grim effects of the redefinition of anti-Semitism put forward in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA), one response to which is the 2020 Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism.

Azad Essa, Hostile Homelands discusses Zionist support of Hindutva activism and lobbying in the US. One group that has modelled its congressional activism on that of the American Jewish Committee and AIPAC is the Hindu American Foundation.

Ajantha mentions Hindutvites repurposing their online Islamophobia in support of Israel after Hamas’s October 7^th military operation.

Alberto Toscano, “The Long Shadow of Racial Fascism” discusses radical Black thinkers who have argued that racial slavery was a form of American fascism.

Robert Paxton’s “The Five Stages of Fascism” makes the case that the KKK may be the earliest fascist organization.

Recallable Books

Alain Brossat and Sylvie Klingard, Revolutionary Yiddishland: A History of Jewish Radicalism.

Joshua Cohen The Netanyahus (John spoke with Cohen about the novel in Recall This Book 110)

Susan Bayly’s Saints, Goddesses and Kings.

Christophe Jaffrelot, Modi’s India.

Listen to and Read the episode here.

119 Violent Majorities, Indian and Israeli Ethnonationalism. Episode 2: Natasha Roth-Rowland (with Lori, Ajantha)

“What is mainstream shifts to the right every generation.”

Natasha Roth-Rowland is a writer and researcher at Diaspora Alliance, a former editor at +972 Magazine, and an expert on the Jewish far right. She joins anthropologists Lori Allen and Ajantha Subramanian midway through a three-part RTB series, “Violent Majorities: Indian and Israeli Ethnonationalism.” Listen to episode 1 here.

The three discuss the transnational formation of the Jewish far right over the 20th and 21st centuries, the gradual movement of far right actors into the heart of the Israeli state, and the shared investment in territorial maximalism, racial supremacy, and natalism across the Zionist ideological spectrum.

Coming up next in RTB 120: Lori and Ajantha sit down with John to synthesize what Murli and Natasha had to say about Ethnonationalism in Indian and in Israel.

Mentioned in the episode

Ben Shitrit, Lihi. Righteous Transgressions: Women’s Activism on the Israeli and Palestinian Religious Right. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016.

El-Or, Tamar, and Gideon Aran. “Giving Birth to a Settlement: Maternal Thinking and Political Action of Jewish Women on the West Bank.” Gender and Society 9, no. 1 (February 1995): 60-78.

Neuman, Tamara. “Maternal ‘Anti-Politics’ in the Formation of Hebron’s Jewish Enclave.”

Journal of Palestine Studies 33, no. 2 (Winter 2004): 51-70.

Neuman, Tamara. Settling Hebron: Jewish Fundamentalism in a Palestinian City. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018.

Krampf, Arie. The Israeli Path to Neoliberalism: The State, Continuity, and Change. New York, NY: Routledge, 2018.

Read and Listen here.

118 Violent Majorities, Indian and Israeli Ethnonationalism. Episode 1: Balmurli Natrajan (with Lori Allen and Ajantha Subramanian)

“The Slippery Slope to a Multiculturalism of Caste”

Professor Balmurli Natrajan has long studied questions of caste, nationalism and fascism in the Indian context: his many works include a 2011 book, The Culturalization of Caste in India. He joins anthropologists Lori Allen and Ajantha Subramanian to kick off a three-part RTB series, “Violent Majorities: Indian and Israeli Ethnonationalism.”

The three discuss the ideological bases of Indian ethnonationalism, including its historical links to European fascism, the role of caste as both a conduit and impediment to suturing a Hindu majority, the overlaps and differences between the mobilization work of the Hindu Right in India and the U.S., and possibilities for countering India’s slide towards fascism.

Mentioned in the episode

B. R. Ambedkar, The Annihilation of Caste, Verso, 2014 [1936].
Zaheer Baber, “Religious nationalism, violence and the Hindutva movement in India,” Dialectical Anthropology 25(1): 61–76, 2000.
Meera Nanda, The God Market: How Globalization is Making India More Hindu, NYU Press, 2011.
Christophe Jaffrelot on Radikaal podcast, August 28, 2022.
Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India, Columbia University Press, 1996.
Christophe Jaffrelot, Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy, Princeton University Press, 2021.
Jairus Banaji, “Fascism as a Mass-Movement: Translator’s Introduction,” Historical Materialism 20.1, 2012: 133-143.
Arthur Rosenberg, “Fascism as a Mass Movement,” Historical Materialism 20.1 (2012) [1934]: 144-189.
Stuart Hall, “The Great Moving Right Show,” Marxism Today, January 1979.
Snigdha Poonam, Dreamers: How Young Indians are Changing the World, Harvard University Press, 2018.
Thomas Blom Hansen, Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay, Princeton University Press, 2001. (edited)