by Jayant Bhandari, Acting Man:

Over the three years in which Narendra Modi has been in power, his support base has continued to increase. Indian institutions — including the courts and the media — now toe his line.

The President, otherwise a ceremonial rubber-stamp post, but the last obstacle keeping Modi from implementing a police state, comes up for re-election by a vote of the legislative houses in July 2017. No one should be surprised if a Hindu fanatic is made the next President. India is rapidly entering a new phase.

Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi on the cover of an Indian magazine in 2002, when he was the Chief Minister of the Indian province of Gujarat. During his reign in Gujarat, a civil-war like situation erupted, which seriously segregated the province’s society. It brought Hindus into a state of trance and excitement and provided them with the fake-security of the collective. Alas, wealth and civilization are created by an intense focus on value-addition, not from the short-term escapist excitement of mobs expressed through riots and rape. Destructive endeavors are a major vulnerability of poor societies, given their irrationality and lack of foresight and planning, and their short-sighted focus on high time-preference, pleasure-centered activities.

Modi, a major world-traveler, who has run around quite a bit to please foreign governments and win the support of identity-lacking non-resident Indians, is no longer going abroad with the same abandon. Historically and even today, whatever gained approval in the West is what Indians have looked up to.

But Modi has matured. Modi has directed the attention of Indians to nationalism, Hindutava (fanatic Hinduism), the army, the flag, the anthem, and other superficial collective “causes” not underpinned any values or wealth-creating, civilization-producing objectives. Behind this is an empty arrogance pumped up by having grown relatively richer (still with GDP at a mere $1,718 per capita) over the last several decades due of the free gift of western technology.

If all this reminds you of the early days of the Arab Spring, you are right on track with respect to understanding what is happening in India. India is an extremely irrational, superstitious and tribal society, which I have discussed in great detail in earlier articles, the last one of which is linked here.

War of Attrition

Modi has infused so-called educated Indians with a sense of confidence and identity. It does not matter that this is all fake. To a man with a tribal, irrational mind incapable of thinking about tomorrow, throwing furniture onto the bonfire is not a problem, for today’s excitement is all that matters. Lacking empathy and compassion — another tribal “quality” — he pays no heed to the suffering of his fellow man.

In the deeply irrational society of India, the institutions of liberty that the British left behind were slowly but surely hollowed out. That had to happen, as the glue and the foundations of reason needed to sustain these institutions do not exist in Indian society. The tribal instincts of Indians are diametrically opposed to the concept of liberty. The concept of free speech, a remnant of the intellectual climate fostered by the British, survives for a small fraction of society – but even that is receding rapidly.

Compared to what happened elsewhere in South Asia, the Middle East and Africa, India was — on a relative basis — a beneficiary of its ethnic diversity. This diversity ensured that a collective approach to destroying institutions of liberty and the rule of law worked only slowly, due to infighting.

Isn’t it racist to call Indians irrational? Political correctness has indeed made people come to believe that we are all blank slates, which merely need to be reprogrammed through training. The reality has been quite different, as our everyday experience in this globalized world shows. Cultures are so resilient that even after people from these poor societies have migrated to the West, they not only fail to assimilate but more importantly, often regress.

Modi’s focus is on centralizing Indian society, increase the State’s control over the individual, increase taxes and compliance, and force people’s attention on collective goals. The tribal instincts of Indians are finally getting the upper hand, as the institutions left by the British come to the end of their lives. India’s chaos means that its totalitarianism will not be like that of Nazi Germany, but similar to that of Zimbabwe.

Modi’s totalitarian agenda also finds support among the IMF, the World Bank and the similar globalist institutions, which appear to be rather simplistic in their thinking. There is a strong belief among these institutions — as they lack understanding of the differences between cultures — that what works in the West must also work in India and other wretched societies.

That may have been possible as long as the British ran India. Without them, fragmentation of the unnatural nation-state of India, or at least aggressive decentralization is the only practical option.

In India where an organization of two people has one person too many, the forced centralization that Modi is undertaking is bound to lead to massive chaos, civil war, turmoil, and the eventual disintegration of India into its tribal constituents. India has chosen a painful path to revert to its tribal normal.

Colonization by the British was the best thing that happened to what came to be known as India. Without the sanity provided by British supervision or the institutions left by them, Indian tribes will forever be engaged in a war of attrition against each other.

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