Racism – what can we learn (to avoid) from India?
JVL Introduction
Amon Sethi writes movingly about the horrific racist violence in India at the beginning of the century and draws some parallels with what has been happening in parts of the UK. While racist murders in the UK are rare whereas hundreds were killed in India, there are issues to take on board, not least considering what followed, how the right wing was emboldened and now in India, there are risks for Muslims, eg of their right even to citizenship; we are not there (yet). As we have written elsewhere, the “othering” of people from other countries, or faiths has been all too common in British history and is currently mainly focused on asylum seekers. In India, Sethi argue, one of the reasons behind Modi’s rise to prominence was rooted in those race riots. Now India’s new citizenship law excludes Muslims as just one way to mete out different treatment for Muslims compared with the majority Hindus.
But forewarned is forearmed and the slide into fascism is not inevitable in the UK. “Early evidence suggests Labour seems to think it can beat the xenophobes on their own terms….(t)his is a trap, because there is no way that Starmer, Cooper and Co. will ever be able to deport enough people to satisfy the mobs chanting kill him as they drag Asian men from their cars, nor will they ever be able to stop enough boats to satisfy the mobs content to burn a children’s library, mosques, (and more) …Efforts to ‘get tough’ on disorder will further shrink democratic space and continue the build-out of a surveillance regime that will affect everyone’s civil liberties. Then as 2029 rolls around, these misplaced promises will set the stage for a narrative of Labour’s failure, and open the door for a figure in the guise of Modi, Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro.”
LL
This article was originally published by Open Democracy on Tue 6 Aug 2024. Read the original here.
As the far right riots in the UK, India offers a cautionary tale
An anti-Muslim pogrom laid the grounds for India’s slide into fascism. The UK can still go down a different path
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A good analysis, but I’ve been reflecting on commens I heard on the radio this afternoon. It appears that the rioting occurred in seven of the ten most deprived areas of England. Lumpenproletariat? Possibly, but, as with the spate of random knife attacks on individuals… I write as news comes in of two people wounded this afternoon in Leicester Square… there is a malaise which needs to be addressed. Do we expect labour to tackle the problem? Don’t hold your breath.