Over the years, Marxists, Frankfurt School acolytes, and Gramscian and Foucauldian post-modernists have insidiously and persistently gained positions of energy inside American academia and, by extension, European and Indian universities. These teachers have then gone on to transmit their concepts to college students. Now, generations of scholars have internalised that Israelis are white Jewish settlers, no completely different than Europeans within the Americas or Australia. They overlook that many Israelis are non-white refugees, forcibly kicked out of Muslim international locations after 1948. They ignore the proven fact that Jews by no means had a colonial empire, until you depend the biblical kingdom of Solomon! Most Israelis usually are not white. Many are brown. Some are even black. Israel is just not an apartheid state. Jews and Arabs can marry, one thing that apartheid South Africa prohibited between whites and non-whites until 1985. An Arab man, Khaled Kabub, is a choose on Israel’s Supreme Court—unthinkable in Hendrik Verwoerd’s South Africa. But then, the reality hardly issues. What issues is the “narrative” constructed by post-modernist minds, readily authorized by self-appointed fact-checkers of the Leftist persuasion.

Israel is paying a heavy worth at present for ignoring the vicious propaganda unleashed by educational cabals. In each Western college, the vast majority of college students have turned anti-Israel and distinctly pro-Hamas. The identical holds true for generations alumni from main US universities. No surprise, then, that the Democratic Party, the haven of this elite group, is attempting to pressurise the American authorities to reward Hamas. There is just not even an iota of acknowledgment from them that it was Hamas who broke the cease-fire. It is unclear whether or not the Democratic institution can proceed to withstand the lobbying of their very own Leftist faction. Israel goes to have a troublesome time recovering from their complacent coverage of the previous couple of many years. It goes to be an uphill job.

We have to study from Israel’s errors. Today Western academia, particularly within the US, has grow to be distinctly anti-India and even anti-Hindu, regardless of its earlier fascination for yoga, meditation, and Vedanta. The proven fact that these Western patrons are supported by their Indian consumer beneficiaries who echo their sentiments makes no distinction. Indian teachers, each in India and the West, remind me of the canine brand on previous 78 RPM data. The canine faithfully barked His Master’s Voice. Indian-origin teachers are faithfully spewing out stuff that Western Leftists wish to hear.

I will now return to my central theme: Words matter. Today, there are various phrases that trouble me, however within the pursuits of brevity, I’ll decide up solely two of them: “majoritarian” and “lynching”.

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The downside with ‘majoritarianism’

In my not-so-humble opinion, “majoritarian” is a phrase with out content material or that means. Perhaps that’s the reason Leftists like to make use of it, given their behavior of indulging in content-less rhetorical lunacy.

The concept that almost all’s views ought to prevail goes again to Britain’s Great Reform Bills of the 19^th century. The concept was {that a} minority, nonetheless wealthy, highly effective, influential, or even clever they could be, has no proper to override the collective, even perhaps unwise, intelligence of the widespread majority. Our founding fathers accepted this concept by adopting grownup franchise and conferring the fitting to vote on poverty-stricken, illiterate, and presumably ignorant residents. But now, we’re informed that if the need of the bulk prevails, it’s not good. This is particularly true among the many university-educated elite within the US and their English-educated counterparts in India. Some of those opponents of the bulk name themselves “liberals”. I, for one, see nothing liberal about them besides their intoxication with the wine of their very own self-importance and sanctimonious posturing.

The jejune “liberals” of at present prefer to quote English thinker John Stuart Mill. Luckily for me, I lately occurred to learn a guide referred to as The Majoritarian Myth by Professor Kausik Gangopadhyay. The good professor quotes Mill extensively. Mill was extraordinarily eager to guard the person from the tyranny of the bulk. But he was not a proponent of grievance-mongering teams in search of safety from the bulk on spurious grounds. Indeed, Mill’s calm, magisterial strategy is kind of at odds with the intense hyper-sensitivity of those self-proclaimed minority teams and their calls for of safety from imaginary micro-aggressions not solely from the present majority however their forebears. Today’s bogus liberals merely can not reach quoting Mill out of context in pushing their agenda.

Words like “majoritarian” and “majoritarianism” are used to brainwash college students into believing that there’s something sinister within the previous Roman expression Vox Populi Vox Dei— which implies, the voice of the folks [is] the voice of God. In this type of pondering, the voice of the folks is just not the voice of God, however as an alternative intolerant, fascist, bigoted, narrow-minded, and naturally, “deplorable”. These college students are prone to develop up believing the worst tales bandied round in regards to the “majoritarian” Indian state.

A Boston-based relative, a subscriber to the New York Times, referred to as me the opposite day. After discussing household issues, like all good Indians, we went into politics. He informed me that he was upset that Muslims have been going through discrimination in India. I then informed him about seven of my pals—an advert filmmaker, an inside designer, a building contractor, an architect, an audio gear dealer, a chauffeur, and a lawyer. They are all Muslims and all of them appear to be getting richer by the yr. I additionally informed him that in Dongri, a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood in Mumbai I repeatedly come throughout thriving retail institutions, eating places, and journey businesses. He went quiet. “So, am I mistaken?” he lastly requested.  My response: “Well, it might not be a bad idea to visit India after 15 years. And rather than just visit, live here for a year. The New York Times is not the Delphic Oracle.”

India is a posh nation. Hindus could also be a numerical majority, however we’re divided by jati, by language, by customized, by sampradaya, and so forth. Muslims dominated giant elements of India earlier than the British arrived and, for a short while, even after that (for example, Hyderabad, Bhopal, Rampur, Palanpur, Junagadh, Tonk, Malerkotla, Banganapalle, Janjira).

To counsel that Muslims in India are an oppressed minority is like claiming that the Afrikaners in South Africa are victims. A minority they could be. But victimhood claims are a travesty of historical past. But then, at present’s NYT readers, lots of whom have gone by way of US universities in the previous couple of many years, readily settle for the notion that all minorities have to be victims. They are doubtless unaware that within the 18th century, whites have been a minority within the Caribbean—as a result of their Marxist professors by no means taught them these uncomfortable, “reactionary” particulars.

And, in fact, trite statistics are the favorite recourse of American teachers. If Muslims in India are poorer or much less educated than others, it have to be as a result of they’re oppressed. Boston residents, apparently, are exempt from backing their claims with info. Here are some— many rich, educated Muslims went away some 70 years in the past; an elite Muslim physique is involved in discouraging Muslim boys from finding out English or Mathematics and in holding back Muslim ladies from getting an schooling in any respect. It is a lot simpler to put the blame of the implications on the majoritarian Indian state.

Also Read: Congress hasn’t changed. It’s still socialist, Manmohan Singh was just a flash in the pan

‘Lynching?’ Really?

 “Lynching” within the American thoughts is a phrase related to the brutal public killings of African Americans by white extremists just like the members of the Ku Klux Klan. The introduction of this time period into modern India would be laughable if the implications weren’t so dysfunctional and detrimental. Despite our pretensions on the contrary, India is just not a non-violent nation. We have at all times had riots, scuffles, public fights, stabbings, violent quarrels, and so forth. And these can come up for a number of causes. There have been recorded cases of fights over cows being attacked (or suspected of being attacked), loud music being performed, “provocative” processions being taken out, seats being grabbed in trains, queues being jumped, an “inappropriate” individual sitting on a horse, and a tea-stall serving another person first. Such incidents have occurred, do occur, and, fairly frankly, will proceed to occur.

Years in the past, on a avenue in Mumbai, I witnessed a pickpocket being mercilessly crushed by a small crowd. I intervened and prompt that the beating be stopped and the police referred to as in. I used to be informed to “buzz off” or else additionally get crushed as an confederate of the pickpocket. Such incidents are a part of our each day lives, and many lead to tragic deaths. But to check with them as “lynching” represents a deliberate and mischievous misrepresentation of each Indian and US historical past. These usually are not ideological or racist occasions. They simply reaffirm that “we are like that only”.

Encouraged by our leftists, readers of the NYT are inspired to consider any post-2014 incident because the equal of American racist atrocities. Never thoughts that such skirmishes have been occurring for many years, even centuries. But even when we scoff at the NYT and its Leftist Indian contributors, it will be a mistake to disregard the development. We would then fall into the entice that the Israelis fell into.

India is a violent and quasi-anarchic nation. However, the narrative that there’s a important deterioration after 2014 is solely fallacious. If something, there have been fewer communal killings in 2014-2021 than 2006-2013. Painting India as a proto-China or Kashmir as a proto-Xinjiang is a sinister lie. We have stabbings, we’ve got fights, we’ve got fracases—we do not have lynching We should take this battle of phrases ahead. We shouldn’t fall asleep just like the Israelis and let this blatant falsehood prevail.

Words matter. And phrases that the American academia and media embrace matter disproportionately as a result of they management what the Marxists name the “narrative”.  Just as a result of the Pentagon or the State Department are good to us at present, we must always not get smug. As time goes by, they too will come underneath the stress of the alumni of at present’s US universities and of the readers of the NYT. In some sense, they’re already underneath this stress. We should put up an assertive (please be aware: not aggressive) marketing campaign to make sure that American and Western academia and media get the message. It’s a robust job, however ignoring it runs the chance of putting us in Israel’s present place by 2034.

Jaithirth Rao is an entrepreneur and a author. Views are private.

(Edited by Asavari Singh)

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