Cut The Bal

Following the death of the odious Bal Thackeray, remember that you are endorsing that Hitler-admiring thug every time that you say or write "Mumbai" rather than that city's real name as used by its High Court, by its Stock Exchange, by its University, and indeed by most of its inhabitants, at least when they are not within earshot of Thackeray's Shiv Sena.

That party, mob, or whatever you wish to call it, was not originally founded on the conceptually ridiculous basis of "Hindu nationalism" or "Hindu fundamentalism", but on Marathi nationalism, which does at least make sense. Among its original prime targets were ethnic Gujaratis in Bombay. But it has become subsumed into the alliance headed by the BJP, and the BJP in turn is increasingly headed by the blood-stained Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of Gujarat, and instigator and director of anti-Muslim pogroms; the party's targets in Orissa, meanwhile, are the Christians.

Modi is banned from entering the EU, the US, and other relatively civilised places. However, last week and on David Cameron's express instructions, he was paid court to by the British High Commissioner to India. Well, of course he was. If, say, apartheid South Africa, or Ian Smith's Rhodesia, or Mussolini's Italy at least before the alliance with Hitler, were still in existence, then it would be an object of uncritical neoconservative adoration and obedience. Hindutva, the ideological roots of which are entirely Western, would be treated in exactly the same way, and where it is already being attempted, on the backs of hundreds of millions of people, it increasingly is being so treated.

I am surprised that someone like Liam Fox or Michael Gove did not turn up to Thackeray's funeral, although Fox might have had some explaining to do over Sri Lanka. But then, would he have had, really? Neocons are never expected to explain their support for Islamists in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Xinjiang, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, Tunisia, Iran (in the form of Jundullah), Lebanon (in supporting the proposed Salafi-led supplanting of the elected government), and now also Syria as assisted by a British and American-armed Turkish, Saudi and Qatari invasion.

The absence of Netanyahu and Lieberman was understandable under the present circumstances. But why were the American neocons and their pathetic Australian wannabes not there? What else do they have to do these days?