mehrauli - Tumblr blog

mehrauli · 2 years

Text

This blog has basically been inactive for a year or so, and in that time I've embraced Marxism-Leninism. I was specifically recommended Enver Hoxha's Imperialism and the Revolution and after reading it a handful of other texts, like this one and this one, and by having good conversations with friends of mine as we began to discuss and understand their content and historical significance, I'm actually fully confident in endorsing this ideology and worldview.

I've been unimpressed with Marxism in the past and that's because I primarily have understood it through the Indian "example". Left-wing politics and ideas give me the chills, and I mistakenly believed Marxism-Leninism to be a left-wing ideology. Understanding better the development over time of both left-wing ideologies and Marxism-Leninism, I've gained a growing appreciation for the distinction. They are unrelated, opposed things.

CPM is a revisionist, Gorbachevite party which espouses a form of social-fascism based on the later Soviet Union. Like the post-Stalinist Gorbachevites themselves, they are nothing but a criminal gang. Neither their ideological fascism nor their overt criminality are stand-out features for a political party to me, and it was their banality, not their remarkable evil, that's led me to dismiss them in the past.

The Naxalite insurgency might have a romantic image as a movement for liberation, and it may be tempting to hope that the future of India lies with some villagers way out in the boonies somewhere else, but the major accomplishment of this insurgency is keeping tribal areas in a state of perpetual warfare for decades. To Maoists, as their supporters have consistently explained it to me, the big aim of Maoism was to establish a "new democracy" by waging a "peoples' war" which has no use for the urban proletariat but desperately, desperately chomps at the bit to enlist the support of an obviously nonexistent benevolent "national bourgeoisie". To think the Naxalites are a revolutionary force just seems obviously wrong, even to one who does not understand Marxist-Leninist ideology. Revolution isn't something that happens when you do enough war, it's something you do to end wars.

My thoughts on both of these groups haven't changed at all and if anything they're much harsher after my embrace of Marxism-Leninism.

It never would have occurred to me that either of these parties were revolutionary organisations which sought to establish the proletariat as a hegemonic social class, because neither are, but Marxism-Leninism is defined by the establishment of the proletariat, not "the oppressed", "the marginalised", any combination of constantly fracturing and conjoining "identity groups", or whatever other thing, as the hegemonic social class. This is accomplished by developing and maturing the organisational capacity of that social class along a correct ideological line until we are ready to seize power.

Understanding ostensiblly Marxist ideas mostly through the lens of Indian "interpreters", none of whom are worth anything because they have all held deeply anti-Marxist ideologies, I had important misunderstandings of Marixsm, and of basic concepts like "the proletariat", for example. The terms are misused often, online, in academia, and in mainstream Indian politics, making the real meaning of these terms and ideas obscure. In misusing these terms, Indian "communists" create new non-Marxist, in fact anti-Marxist theories, which have been handily disposed of once and for all by the life's work of Enver Hoxha. For this reason, Imperialism and the Revolution is the most important book for Indians to read, period. Time has proven him correct on enemy after enemy, from the Eurocommunists and the Titoites to the Kruschevites and Mao Zedong Thought. I&TR is especially important in understanding the ongoing applicability of Lenin's model of capitalism in the present era to every country on Earth in the present day, even India which thinks quite incorrectly that its vast cultural, social, and economic distinctions somehow constitute a difference in kind from the global state of economic degeneration.

My politics in the past have been tools which I have used, yes, in an attempt to gain an analysis of what's happening around me, but this pursuit was muddled by the sometimes greater need to express anger and process personal traumas which were closely and permanently bound with the urgent political situation in India. Often -- not as often on this blog as in other places, but it's probably happened -- the intention was not to lay down intellectual truth but to knock down intellectual walls in an intentionally disruptive manner, like Diogenes presenting his featherless biped. I don't think this was an inappropriate way for me to act at the time, particularly as the avowedly "political" terrain this took place in is all a show anyway, and I knew and wrote about that then. But having found a correct theory through which truth may be arrived at, it feels outdated and immature to persist in that mode.

The correct course of action now is to work towards establishing organisation and understanding of Hoxha's line. I've focused on I&TR in particular, because it is vitally important to eliminate third-worldist ideology in India, which unforgivably has been adopted by Indian "Marxists" of all kinds.

Every Indian political ideology derives ultimately from Maoist third-worldism. Although Maoist third-worldism is a tool of Chinese imperialism, it's been adopted by the Indian political mainstream which also openly aims to establish itself as an imperial hegemony in the so-called "third world", and competes openly with China in doing so. In India, as in China, this takes the form of an imperialist national and ethnic chauvanism, and many forms of racial oppression in India, for example in Assam against Bengalis and in Delhi against Northeasterners, as well as against Kashmiris both in India and in Kashmir, are informed by this ideology. Racial oppression is very difficult to talk about in India and I'll leave that at that for now, but it is a problem worth taking seriously which has had and continues to have very serious impact on Indian history and speaking truthfully it must be addressed in order to bring any serious change to the place. But not through tumblr discourse. This is not an appropriate place for that.

The thing making race in India most difficult to talk about is that it is the product of proletarianisation in the 20th and 21st centuries, as opposed to caste which is considered to predate this period significantly. The liberal worldview (and India is a deeply liberal country) is that "axes of oppression" should be handled one at a time, over a period of centuries of gradual electoral reform, rather than through revolutionary change. "The marginalised" are supposed to spend these centuries offering martyr after martyr to the sacred election of officials. In India many send their martyrs off for this proudly. But having seen elections themselves used as an instrument of horrific and incomprehensible violence in 2019, I am not okay with it anymore.

Because of proletarianisation, that is, the mass displacement of people from their ancestral homelands, you end up with Biharis in Kolkata and Northeasterners in Delhi. Racial antagonisms are possible to create only after this mass transport of people under conditions that leave them vulnerable. By creating racial antagonisms in growing cities, the unity of the working class is undermined. These conflicts are manufactured and avoidable, but their function is to prevent the maturation of the working class, keeping recently displaced people vulnerable and exploitable. The same is true of caste. The same is true of "religion". The pop-criticism that the proletariat in India can't or shouldn't seize power because they're a "privileged class" is dopey, obscene, and racist. Being that we all now live in Kolkata or Delhi or wherever, in clearly unacceptable conditions, the question is not who should be in control of India's one alotted dollar but how a country can actually be developed which creates acceptable living conditions for the people in it.

The most disgusting thing to me is the talk about "overpopulation" as though it's futile to talk about building a country where 1.4 billion people can live in decent conditions. That, right there, is the primary conflict: the ruling class does not want to, and cannot, develop a country which can sustain human life.

I have spent the last couple years traveling throughout eastern Europe. There are ruins here, particularly in Albania, that I think people should come to instead of Mecca in order to instantly understand everything about how a ruling class can turn a thriving, industrial society into a hyperexploited country with a lower standard of living than India. Poverty, desperation, prostitution, and addiction exist here alongside shut-down factories, making it very clear that this is actually the way that the bourgeoisie consider that people should live, in eastern europe and India and everywhere. The constantly-declining conditions in America and Europe Proper make this clear as well.

Indians talk about their ruling class like little babies that they're holding their hands until they learn to walk, when they should be spoken of as brutish, killable tyrants.

Going back to the discussion on the proletariat as a "privileged class" and a tool of caste exploitation, to be frank, any qualified state, even a non-socialist one, should have handled caste oppression as a zero-tolerance matter. Caste is a product of anarchy and lawlessness, and the imposition of law, any law, which is the basic responsibility of a state, can eliminate it in India quickly as it has everywhere else in the world, even under wartime conditions!

In India, uniquely, caste has been mainlined and philosophised into a modern political system. This is completely unforgivable, and means that caste cannot be eliminated in India without revolutionary political change, and not only that but that its elimination is necessary to any successful revolution; any revolution which does not eliminate it will be eliminated by it. This is why, historically, socialist states have prioritised resolving inter-tribal and inter-communal conflicts, which, to be clear, is all caste is. Caste isn't magic. This is not Marxist-Leninist ideology, it is basic statecraft, so elementary I don't feel like it should need saying, but I know that it does.

And the question to me is, everyone knows that India is a violent and unequal society where naked oppression is practiced unapologetically. Right now, the overwhelming tone of the country is deeply deprived people fighting each other in a perpetual tribal war, hoping to gain each others' resources. These resources only dwindle; the development of the country is something which never happens. It is a lawless country where pogroms are common and the urban areas are full of vulnerabilities and people being exploited and taken advantage of.

The country's political thinkers have thrown their intellects completely behind defending and legitimising liberal democracy, hoping to throw shoulds at it until the Indian constitution is a document with legal standing, as though all that is necessary is to wokescold the politicians and the voters and the journalists and the universities until they create supply of liberalism to fill the demand made by you. This was essentially the theory I've been operating on my entire life, as if tyranny could be gently nudged until it creates a just world worth living in.

Countries have been developed before. India's failure to develop has been usually rationalised, to be blunt, along the lines of racial or cultural inferiority. The economic factors behind this have not been explored.

But they are in Imperialism and the Revolution, and everyone should read it and understand everything. When you do that, you understand perfectly why India hasn't developed and you understand why it's pointless to talk about annihilating caste or to even look at racism until we get on the same page about this.

#Just getting some thoughts out there. Not announcing an end to the hiatus or anything.#Also I've completely disavowed anarchism obviously.#I was always a bit of an anarchist sympathiser and boy was that making my life demonstrably worse.

3 notes · View notes

mehrauli · 2 years

Text

besides plenty of asian countries eat food in the wrong order its not a big deal

Yeonmi Park is such a fucking right-wing grifter, and the people who believe her and eat her bullshit up are braindead idiots.

772 notes · View notes

mehrauli · 2 years

Text

The Hermit

179 notes · View notes

mehrauli · 2 years

Text

A very toasty Manusmriti burning day to all who celebrate.

#manusmriti dahan divas #manusmriti dahan diwas #manusmriti burning day

8 notes · View notes

mehrauli · 3 years

Photo

A Favourite Custom, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1909, Tate

Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1909 Size: support: 660 x 451 mm frame: 957 x 751 x 83 mm Medium: Oil on wood

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/alma-tadema-a-favourite-custom-n02675

258 notes · View notes

mehrauli · 3 years

Text

Hinduism as such from its inception has been a political project with two objectives - first, the elimination of Muslim influence on culture, society, and government, second, the recuperation of unrelated local traditions into itself in an inferior position to its brahminical ideological base. It is a political movement and not comparable to any religion and the label "religion" is not categorically applicable to this. Although it could be applied to its brahminic theological aspects which have been criticised by Ambedkar among others, these aspects are inessential to the political project and plenty of self-proclaimed atheists in India carry out its objectives just fine.

Diwali is an example of a place where the hindu narrative falls apart because anyone who cares to look can see that the hindu coat of paint is an obvious imposition onto an ancient harvest festival that had nothing to do with Ram, who many people had never heard of until the RSS missionarised him to them less than fifty years ago, or Kali, whose was recuperated and mainstreamed less than two centuries ago in West Bengal where untouchability is still practiced against her by having her temples separated from those of the native (or at least more thoroughly recuperated) brahminical gods. Hindus have absolutely no claim to having invented Diwali, period.

The liberal strategy of attempting to affect cultural reform by shaming and making enemies of random people celebrating Diwali is built to fail. In the grand sweep of history, virtually nobody who's celebrated Diwali has done so because they're a violent supremacist. Diwali is occupied cultural territory which cannot and should not be "abolished" (the festival itself is lovely) but which can and should be uncoupled from its more recent imposed hindu political and brahminic theological veneers which exist mostly to create an opportunity for the violence which is essential to hinduism as a political project.

Happy Diwali everyone.

#diwali

56 notes · View notes

mehrauli · 3 years

Text

Diwali is an ancient south asian harvest festival which significantly predates hinduism, and on that note I hope everyone else's is going better than mine so far.

8 notes · View notes

mehrauli · 3 years

Text

Follow bahujanmuslim on instagram.

She's not me. Her shit is just 🔥.

7 notes · View notes

mehrauli · 3 years

Text

Brahmins: *Deliberately try to saffronize Guru Nanak's image, making him look like a docile man*

Guru Nanak: Anti-caste, anti-class sharp witted revolutionary who carried a Khanjar (knife) and a Sota (stick) for self defence, refused to wear a Janeu and was the biggest critic of Bahman hegemony of his time.

My point is- stop portraying Guru Nanak Maharaj as some innocent, harmless godman. Brahmins use this to discredit the war that Dassam Pita waged against tyrants. The iron that Guru Gobind Patshah wielded was forged by the first Khalsa Guru Nanak Dev Ji. Guru Nanak's harmful portrayal as merely a spiritual being (which He was) has been abused by Bahmans time and time again to discredit his disdain and critique of Bahmans.

33 notes · View notes

mehrauli · 3 years

Text

No spiritual practice is the exclusive property of any “religion”. What religions do is juxtapose them and resignify them. The brahminical pretension to having “invented chakras” or whatever is absolute nonsense to anyone who has even the fuzziest idea what they’re talking about.

5 notes · View notes

mehrauli · 3 years

Text

Dude, you have no idea what you’re talking about. “Concepts like the third eye and chakras” are not “from Hinduism”, they are from a south and western asian spiritual milieu which within the past 200 years or so has become consolidated into an exclusive ethno-religion via a process that the people you’re lecturing probably know about as much or more about than you. The fact is you can’t be both “anti-hindutva” and “anti cultural appropriation” because “Hinduism” itself per se is literally nothing but the grandest cultural appropriation operation of all time. Chakras didn’t enter western spiritual discourse because a bunch of white tourist boogeymen decided to go to India and plunder whatever sweet discourse they could find, it was primarily sufis who were active in the early New Age movement as well as other godmen like Osho who also rejected the label “Hindu” because they knew what they were talking about way more than you do. Their use of these “concepts” predates hindu claims to their exclusivity by centuries if not millennia.

You’re the one spreading misinformation, and a lot of that misinformation, especially that of the nature that India was great and not a caste-ridden hellhole before Europe got there and ruined everything, is straight out of “hindutva” revisionism.

Diaspora go back. Jesus. ABCDs GTFO and STFU.

Anyone interested in learning about Europe and the caste system can consider reading From Millions to Fractions or What Congress and Gandhi have Done To The Untouchables by Dr. Ambedkar. Jagdish, Son of Ahmed is also a very enlightening case study of what hindu consolidationism looks like on the ground in what is, all things considered, a very mild example.

Also the Europeans didn’t “think you were weird” for practicing your caste-exclusive ancestral “religion”, you enjoyed a very high social status in colonial India, and when they left they put you back in charge so you could massacre the rest of us practically every couple weeks or so.

Please do NOT learn from “actual hindus”, because they are without exception all on this kind of shit. It makes as much sense as saying “learn from actual Catholics” instead of reading Agrippa and if it were coming from a Catholic priest, as this is, I might suspect a conflict of interest. People like this are trying to capitalise on the cultural legacy of their upper Hindu caste which was mostly achieved by plundering the rest of our civilisations since centuries. Do not let these grotesque identity entrepreneurs use their upper caste status as an ugly excuse to be awful and entitled to people. Whatever religion they claim they are, what they are saying still benefits their castemen and their castemen only at the expense of literally everybody else in and from south Asia.

People should really try to look at things in context. And I say this not just because I’m tired of nobody understanding what things like oracles or priests in Ancient Greece were, but because it’d really help us avoid shit like the bastardised western chakras. If we actually took the time to look at things in context, things would be so much better. And for living religions like Hinduism, please learn from actual Hindus / Hindu sources and not some witch on tumblr for example.

Context is literally everything.

(also please do your own research instead of relying on a tumblr blog like me for example especially since I’m a pagan blog.)

#Think I know what my next major project is now though.

160 notes · View notes

mehrauli · 3 years

Text

Original post: 7 Nov, 2020

Reblog: 18 Dec, 2020

Holy fucking shit, though, as of 12 Jan, 2021.

The wildly disproportionate attention being paid to the am*rican election vs the Bihari election is a naked confession of what democracy actually is and how it actually works. The american election has to be blasted over the entire world to legitimise liberal “democracy” in the third world and postcommunist states. The ads aren’t actually for D*nald Tr*mp or J*e B*den, they’re for democracy itself, they’re for the spectacular shared experience and the drama of it all. People follow the american election like it’s Game of Thrones and they get moral lessons out of it which are that democracy is great because the people choose the leaders and your vote matters and team Edward or team Jacob etc. Basically the same infrastructure goes into american pop culture that goes into american elections and their ridiculously high production values and the intended range of emotional effect is about the same: they want to create a demographic with brand loyalty while cutting into the market of their competitors. They’re not looking to convince each and every individual American by reasoned discussion, they’re looking to create market conditions which coerce brand loyalty.

What you don’t see from outside the country is the way every single person in the country becomes gradually weaponised into an agitated ball of neuroses, which is why the yanks on twitter are all like “check in on your american friends right now and make sure they’re alright uwu” and shit; because they’re turned into lunatics for one out of every four years arguing about something that they know is next to pointless because of gerrymandering, the electoral college, the corporate stranglehold over the media, etc. It makes a powerful psychological impression and constitutes the central ritual of the american civil cult; it’s the eucharistic rite by which they become a shared national body. The rest of us, watching in amusement or dread or “solidarity” or whatever it is we tell ourselves, knowing damn good and well that the american election has more influence over our countries than we do, internalise the fake news that the american election has anything to do with what kind of government americans want to have and one day the benefits of democracy will trickle down to us where our votes will matter like americans’ supposedly do if only we become educated and enfranchised like they are and our democracies just aren’t old enough yet but this is how they look when they get older, you can always tell the best political system because it creates decades and decades of perpetual instability in the third world; just a few more civil wars or genocides and it should be smooth sailing from then out, promise.

Indian state elections, on the other hand, are intentionally depoliticised because the aim of the Indian ruling class at this point is not to secure their hegemony but to naturalise it by calling it religion, etc, and by hiding how the sausage gets made which is through wonton violence against Muslims which doesn’t leave, and preferably doesn’t even make, regional press. The Bihar election has no greater lesson to teach the world or even the rest of India or even really Bihar, it doesn’t have the same role in global liberal ideology and isn’t produced in the same way or for the same reason.

For the american ruling class, Tr*mp created a crisis of legitimacy from which american empire has not recovered not because he was particularly evil (his body count is almost definitely the lowerst of any US president in my lifetime) but because he didn’t manage it effectively. The US elections are so spectacular because USA’s ruling class proactively needs to legitimise whoever it is they want to be in power for the next 4 years, and B*den was a particularly hard sell. While in Bihar the current power arrangement is something that’s basically consented to by every segment of the ruling class. It should be noted that Bihar doesn’t have the same kind of mass media propaganda infrastructure of an american federal election, but the reason it doesn’t have that is because it doesn’t need that because the Bihari ruling class frankly doesn’t want young social media people getting involved like we did in Hathras. And so we won’t, because the reason we’re all so involved in US elections isn’t because we as individuals all decided to be but because there was a herculean weaponisation of american capital to get us all invested, and Bihar can’t and doesn’t want to match that.

In both cases, we fool ourselves to think that what anyone is and isn’t paying attention to is a result of our organic genuine interests as people or intellectuals or whatever. The fact is we’re watching an american superhero movie instead of Rwanda Radio; either way we’re just eating up bullshit but one’s clearly more entertaining.

Democracy is a method of engineering human attention and civic engagement; it’s something that manipulates us, not something we manipulate, and that’s why people act so apparently irrational around it. It is a system that consistently produces irrational behaviour and so irrational behaviour in and around it is not a moral failing or even a personal choice; you can’t treat people like moral or rational actors in a democracy without reproducing the logic of the system in the first place.

71 notes · View notes

mehrauli · 3 years

Text

lol

71 notes · View notes