Elections in various countries

[mèþru]

It's based on public perception polling

[mèþru]

That plus maybe questionnaires about how often you've had to pay a bribe and things like that. I remember that their website had a good explanation of their methodology, but I forgot it.

[Vijay]

Mostly unrelated, but I've noticed a lot of Indians investing quite a bit of faith in Narendra Modi. I still don't get what they see in him. Recently, I was talking with a co-worker who's half Indian and saying something along the lines of "India has problems XYZ." My eyes went wide when his reply was "yeah, but Modi ji will probably fix it." Like, "Modi ji" has already been in power for close to five years, and he hasn't changed much for the better so far.

Hindu nationalists more generally have also been gaining a stranglehold on historical narratives even among the diaspora and been curiously trying to portray themselves as some sort of allies of low-caste people, as well as to gain political support from non-Muslim religious minorities (particularly Christians within India and Jews abroad). The attempts to form alliances with low-caste people are definitely older than Modi's election campaign.

[mèþru]

Ew. No way does Modi deserve the -ji. And I don't understand how non-Muslim religious minorities in India don't feel a need to make a common cause with the moderate/secular Muslims, when they face from Hindu nationalists a lot of the same problems.

[alynnidalar]

Not quite an election, but how 'bout that Venezuela??

[mèþru]

I don't think either Guaido or Maduro are legitimate, but Guaido can restore rule of law and democracy, so I'm supporting him

[Vijay]

And I don't understand how non-Muslim religious minorities in India don't feel a need to make a common cause with the moderate/secular Muslims, when they face from Hindu nationalists a lot of the same problems.

I guess it depends on which non-Muslim minorities you're talking about but in one word: Pakistan.

Anti-Pakistani fervor has been common in India longer than either India or Pakistan has been independent, and it's by no means limited to any specific region or religious group. Some Muslims in India even outside of Kashmir openly support Pakistan, and some are known to fund or even join terrorist groups. This on top of the religious riots, the terrorist attacks, and the rise of Hindu nationalism has been doing a lot of damage to how Indians in general perceive Islam (including to some extent how Indian Muslims perceive themselves) and to any chances of making alliances with moderate Muslims.

That being said, Hindu nationalists have always been relatively unpopular in Kerala at least since almost half the population is non-Hindu and beef has always been one of our biggest sources of protein. Modi's administration is not the first to attempt a nationwide ban on beef, but these attempts (and the BJP, RSS, etc. more generally) have never had much support from either the people or the government of Kerala. However, the BJP has been gaining political support in recent years AFAIK, and the central government appears to have been repeatedly harassing the state government, attempting to sabotage our biggest local holiday, and murdering several members of the other local political parties.

[mèþru]

Ah, the whole Pakistan-India thing. Sometimes you make Israel-Palestine relations look downright friendly.

[mèþru]

What do you guys think about the whole Taliban negotiations thing? Worth it? Likely to be broken within days?

[Vijay]

Ah, the whole Pakistan-India thing. Sometimes you make Israel-Palestine relations look downright friendly.

Never really thought about it like that, but yes, Partition especially was really violent. I'm not sure what to compare it to elsewhere, maybe the Cultural Revolution?

Personally, I find that most Indians have no idea what Pakistan is like even though North India has way more in common with Pakistan than it does with South India, as far as cultural similarities or differences are concerned. They're way too quick not only to invent differences out of thin air but also to equate the people with their government when in fact they have very little say over their government and separatist movements have always been common.

What do you guys think about the whole Taliban negotiations thing? Worth it? Likely to be broken within days?

I don't know anything about it, but no, I wouldn't expect anything much to come out of it.

[mèþru]

Well, there is a lot of demonisation of India in Pakistani school textbooks, so I'd get the Pakistani POV from state brainwashing. But the Indian POV just doesn't make sense. There's way more pro-Palestinian Israelis as a proportion of the countries' non-Arab population than there seems to be pro-Pakistani Indians as a proportion of its non-Muslim population.

[Vijay]

It's extremely rare for the Indian media to portray Pakistan or Pakistanis in a positive light at all. Veer-Zaara is probably the best India has ever done towards rapprochement, and even that movie is heavily biased, especially the final scene where they dramatically cross the border into India. Every other media portrayal of Pakistanis I have ever seen coming from India is strictly negative. If anything, the slightly higher degree of political freedom in India (the fact that it isn't clearly just the government brainwashing its citizens but rather something a bit more subtle) leads to this kind of propaganda gaining greater popular trust than its equivalent on the other side of the border.

[mèþru]

@Vijay
What do you think of the idea (not the feasibility) of an independent and united secular Jammu and Kashmir?

[Vijay]

I think Kashmiris have every reason to want self-determination or at least independence from India, but I'm also skeptical of the idea that an independent Kashmir would be the best way to get it. It would be a throwback to the pre-colonial period. We've already seen what happens when South Asia is divided into a whole bunch of small countries. We turn against one another and become that much easier to conquer.

I'd kind of rather see the opposite, in a way. I am so sick of these stupid, petty wars over religion and caste and looking too Chinese. In the long run, they benefit no one anyway, not even the politicians, really. Instead, I think it would probably be better for all the South Asian countries to form a strong regional alliance while also doing a better job of acknowledging their cultural diversity and allowing minorities to govern themselves without being left out of the federal government entirely.

[Vijay]

Another thing I wanted to say about Hindu nationalists in India is that they have co-opted certain historical figures to advance their agenda in a political context. In particular, it seems they have chosen to use Aurangzeb as a symbol of Islam in India. Indians hate Aurangzeb. My mom taught me about him as if he were a monster without ever breathing a word about his religion. Since Shivaji was one of his most prominent rivals, they have also co-opted him as a symbol of Hindus resisting fundamentalist Islam. His virtues are greatly exaggerated in modern-day India even outside Maharashtra.

[mèþru]

I think Aurangzeb was a monster and there is plenty of reason far all moderate, limeral and/or reformist Muslims to hate him.

[Vijay]

I think he's usually portrayed as one, and I think when my mom first told me about him, I used to be scared that he could come murder me in the middle of the night or something because she had neglected to mention that he was also dead. There seems to be some debate regarding the historical accuracy of that image, though. Of course he murdered many of his own family members, but I'm not sure to what extent this was different from what other Mughal rulers did to gain power. It's apparently also possible that his destruction of Hindu temples is exaggerated and he also built temples, opposed bigotry against Hindus and Shia Muslims, and employed more Hindus than any previous Mughal ruler.

[Linguoboy]

Holy crap. First of all, I didn't even know Thailand was finally having elections this year. So when I saw the headline Thailand's king condemns bid by sister to become PM, I thought he was talking about Yingluck Shinawatra (Thaksin's sister) not his own sister.

[mèþru]

I doubt that these are going to be real elections.

[tiramisu]

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