Will 2012 be the year of the Indian Spring?
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aziz
Reply
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Arwi, 
shams and one other person are discussing.
Ali 1:53 am on January 5, 2012 Permalink |
It is highly unlikely that there can be any Middle East type revolution anywhere in India. The problem is India’s diversity and regionalism. India is more likely to go through a 1947 type inter religious Civil War or a china style Maoist takeover of some districts especially in rural areas of Eastern India. Any such event can lead to a breakup of Indian republic and it can end up as it was before Mughals united most of India through conquest.
aziz 6:33 am on January 5, 2012 Permalink |
I don’t think one precludes the other – and the article is pretty specific about the areas where such mass movements might arise (fertile ground), none of which are particularly diverse. Gujarat farmers, Kashmiris, these are specific downtrodden groups (with vast numbers). The diversity of Delhi is irrelevant, and these issues do cut across religious lines. I think that the dangerof civil war is a macro-concern but these micro-concerns are more likely since they require far less poliical and grassroots inertia to start rolling.
shams 1:38 pm on January 10, 2012 Permalink |
the analogy would be the US. India could easily have lots of localized occupy style movements.
aziz 8:08 am on January 13, 2012 Permalink |
India hasnt fully embraced teh capitalist model, it still has profound socialist tendencies. There is crazy inequality but that’s almost hereditary. The caste system also probably blunts some of that social angst into apathy and acceptance.
shams 1:49 pm on January 13, 2012 Permalink
wallah…..occupy is only peripherally about capitalism.
its really about elitism.
Are you Anonymous, Aziz?
Arwi 10:45 pm on January 14, 2012 Permalink
Caste blunts angst? You have got to be kidding me. (For that matter, inequality in the US is also inherited)
aziz 8:10 am on January 17, 2012 Permalink |
ah. Arwi – I obviously didn’t think that through enough.
What i was trying to get at is that there is social inertia that blunts some of of the grassroots sentiment required for a movement like OWS. That represents a higher social threshold to cross than in a casteless and explicitly meritocratic (at least, in theory) society like the US. So theres an additional barrier for OWS-type movements to surmount.
Arwi 2:34 am on February 4, 2012 Permalink
This strikes me as such a strange thing to say about contemporary India — there are several movements far more militant than OWS, whether Naxalites or the various Dalit movements, and non-rich Americans are much more likely to think they share interests with the rich.
But to “talk Islam” — Pasmanda activism, and Pasmanda /Dalits.