Israel lost control of the ‘narrative’ to Left academics. India must not go the same way

Israel is paying a heavy price today for ignoring the vicious propaganda unleashed by academic cabals in the West. India runs the same risk unless it takes the battle of words forward.

Pro-Palestine protesters outside the library of Columbia University in New York | Image for representation | Photo: Instagram/@cuapartheiddivest

Words matter. Let us not forget the opening line of the Gospel of St. John: “In the beginning was the Word.”

A few decades ago, Marxist academics in US universities started using a new set of words to describe Israel. Words like “settler”, “colonialist”, “white supremacist”, and “apartheid state” started being bandied about. Despite being blatantly false, these words gained currency simply by the use of Goebbelsian repetition tactics. But when this new vocabulary started taking shape, the Israeli government and Israel supporters committed a cardinal mistake. They chose to ignore these academics. After all, who listened to boring academics and their short-lived crackpot ideas? The mainstream American political class was “safely” pro-Israel. This approach has turned out to be a strategic blunder.

Over the years, Marxists, Frankfurt School acolytes, and Gramscian and Foucauldian post-modernists have insidiously and persistently gained positions of power within American academia and, by extension, European and Indian universities. These academics have then gone on to transmit their ideas to students. Now, generations of students have internalised that Israelis are white Jewish settlers, no different than Europeans in the Americas or Australia. They overlook that many Israelis are non-white refugees, forcibly kicked out of Muslim countries after 1948. They ignore the fact that Jews never had a colonial empire, unless you count the biblical kingdom of Solomon! Most Israelis are not white. Many are brown. Some are even black. Israel is not an apartheid state. Jews and Arabs can marry, something that apartheid South Africa prohibited between whites and non-whites until 1985. An Arab man, Khaled Kabub, is a judge on Israel’s Supreme Court—unthinkable in Hendrik Verwoerd’s South Africa. But then, the truth hardly matters. What matters is the “narrative” constructed by post-modernist minds, readily approved by self-appointed fact-checkers of the Leftist persuasion.

Israel is paying a heavy price today for ignoring the vicious propaganda unleashed by academic cabals. In every Western university, the majority of students have turned anti-Israel and distinctly pro-Hamas. The same holds true for generations alumni from leading US universities. No wonder, then, that the Democratic Party, the haven of this elite group, is trying to pressurise the American government to reward Hamas. There is not even an iota of acknowledgment from them that it was Hamas who broke the cease-fire. It is unclear whether the Democratic establishment can continue to resist the lobbying of their own Leftist faction. Israel is going to have a tough time recovering from their complacent policy of the last few decades. It is going to be an uphill task.

We need to learn from Israel’s mistakes. Today Western academia, especially in the US, has become distinctly anti-India and even anti-Hindu, despite its earlier fascination for yoga, meditation, and Vedanta. The fact that these Western patrons are supported by their Indian client beneficiaries who echo their sentiments makes no difference. Indian academics, both in India and the West, remind me of the dog logo on old 78 RPM records. The dog faithfully barked His Master’s Voice. Indian-origin academics are faithfully spewing out stuff that Western Leftists want to hear.

I will now return to my central theme: Words matter. Today, there are many words that bother me, but in the interests of brevity, I will pick up only two of them: “majoritarian” and “lynching”.

 

The problem with ‘majoritarianism’

In my not-so-humble opinion, “majoritarian” is a word without content or meaning. Perhaps that is why Leftists like to use it, given their habit of indulging in content-less rhetorical lunacy.

The idea that the majority’s views should prevail goes back to Britain’s Great Reform Bills of the 19^th century. The idea was that a minority, however rich, powerful, influential, or even wise they may be, has no right to override the collective, perhaps even unwise, intelligence of the common majority. Our founding fathers accepted this idea by adopting adult franchise and conferring the right to vote on poverty-stricken, illiterate, and possibly ignorant citizens. But now, we are told that if the will of the majority prevails, it is not good. This is especially true among the university-educated elite in the US and their English-educated counterparts in India. Some of these opponents of the majority call themselves “liberals”. I, for one, see nothing liberal about them except their intoxication with the wine of their own self-importance and sanctimonious posturing.

The jejune “liberals” of today like to quote English philosopher John Stuart Mill. Luckily for me, I recently happened to read a book called The Majoritarian Myth by Professor Kausik Gangopadhyay. The good professor quotes Mill extensively. Mill was extremely keen to protect the individual from the tyranny of the majority. But he was not a proponent of grievance-mongering groups seeking protection from the majority on spurious grounds. Indeed, Mill’s calm, magisterial approach is quite at odds with the extreme hyper-sensitivity of these self-proclaimed minority groups and their demands of protection from imaginary micro-aggressions not only from the current majority but their forebears. Today’s bogus liberals simply cannot succeed in quoting Mill out of context in pushing their agenda.

Words like “majoritarian” and “majoritarianism” are used to brainwash students into believing that there is something sinister in the old Roman expression Vox Populi Vox Dei— which means, the voice of the people [is] the voice of God. In this kind of thinking, the voice of the people is not the voice of God, but instead illiberal, fascist, bigoted, narrow-minded, and of course, “deplorable”. These students are likely to grow up believing the worst stories bandied around about the “majoritarian” Indian state.

A Boston-based relative, a subscriber to the New York Times, called me the other day. After discussing family matters, like all good Indians, we went into politics. He told me that he was upset that Muslims were facing discrimination in India. I then told him about seven of my friends—an ad filmmaker, an interior designer, a construction contractor, an architect, an audio equipment trader, a chauffeur, and a lawyer. They are all Muslims and all of them seem to be getting richer by the year. I also told him that in Dongri, a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood in Mumbai I regularly come across thriving retail establishments, restaurants, and travel agencies. He went quiet. “So, am I mistaken?” he finally asked.  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.”

The New York Times building in New York City | Pixabay

India is a complex country. Hindus may be a numerical majority, but we are divided by jati, by language, by custom, by sampradaya, and so on. Muslims ruled large parts of India before the British arrived and, for a little while, even after that (for instance, Hyderabad, Bhopal, Rampur, Palanpur, Junagadh, Tonk, Malerkotla, Banganapalle, Janjira).

To suggest that Muslims in India are an oppressed minority is like claiming that the Afrikaners in South Africa are victims. A minority they may be. But victimhood claims are a travesty of history. But then, today’s NYT readers, many of whom have gone through US universities in the last few decades, readily accept the notion that all minorities must be victims. They are likely unaware that in the 18th century, whites were a minority in the Caribbean—because their Marxist professors never taught them these uncomfortable, “reactionary” details.

And, of course, trite statistics are the favourite recourse of American academics. If Muslims in India are poorer or less educated than others, it must be because they are oppressed. Boston residents, apparently, are exempt from backing their claims with facts. Here are some— many wealthy, educated Muslims went away some 70 years ago; an elite Muslim body is involved in discouraging Muslim boys from studying English or Mathematics and in holding back Muslim girls from getting an education at all. It is so much easier to lay the blame of the consequences on the majoritarian Indian state.

 

‘Lynching?’ Really?

 “Lynching” in the American mind is a word associated with the brutal public killings of African Americans by white extremists like the members of the Ku Klux Klan. The introduction of this term into contemporary India would be laughable if the consequences were not so dysfunctional and detrimental. Despite our pretensions to the contrary, India is not a non-violent country. We have always had riots, scuffles, public fights, stabbings, violent quarrels, and so on. And these can arise for multiple reasons. There have been recorded instances of fights over cows being attacked (or suspected of being attacked), loud music being played, “provocative” processions being taken out, seats being grabbed in trains, queues being jumped, an “inappropriate” person sitting on a horse, and a tea-stall serving someone else first. Such incidents have happened, do happen, and, quite frankly, will continue to happen.

Representational image | PTI

Years ago, on a street in Mumbai, I witnessed a pickpocket being mercilessly beaten by a small crowd. I intervened and suggested that the beating be stopped and the police called in. I was told to “buzz off” or else also get beaten as an accomplice of the pickpocket. Such incidents are part of our daily lives, and many result in tragic deaths. But to refer to them as “lynching” represents a deliberate and mischievous misrepresentation of both Indian and US history. These are not ideological or racist events. They just reaffirm that “we are like that only”.

Encouraged by our leftists, readers of the NYT are encouraged to think of any post-2014 incident as the equivalent of American racist atrocities. Never mind that such skirmishes have been happening for decades, even centuries. But even if we scoff at the NYT and its Leftist Indian contributors, it would be a mistake to ignore the trend. We would then fall into the trap that the Israelis fell into.

India is a violent and quasi-anarchic country. However, the narrative that there is a significant deterioration after 2014 is simply wrong. If anything, there were 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 have fights, we have fracases—we do not have lynching We must take this battle of words forward. We should not go to sleep like the Israelis and let this blatant falsehood prevail.

Words matter. And words that the American academia and media embrace matter disproportionately because they control what the Marxists call the “narrative”.  Just because the Pentagon or the State Department are nice to us today, we should not get smug. As time goes by, they too will come under the pressure of the alumni of today’s US universities and of the readers of the NYT. In some sense, they are already under this pressure. We must put up an assertive (please note: not aggressive) campaign to ensure that American and Western academia and media get the message. It’s a tough job, but ignoring it runs the risk of placing us in Israel’s current position by 2034.

Jaithirth Rao is an entrepreneur and a writer. Views are personal.

(Edited by Asavari Singh)