Newsnight is about to run a report about caste discrimination in Britain, on the banning of which the House of Commons will vote tomorrow. Last month, the Government lined itself up for a Lords defeat over the outlawing of that practice. How could it conceivably have been opposed to the prohibition of such a thing? Read on.
The Hindu nationalist BJP is now about as likely as the Congress Party to be the principal party of government in India. Within and allied to the BJP are violently fascistic elements such as the Shiv Sena and those who massacre Christians in Orissa. Leadership is passing to Narendra Modi, who is heavily implicated in Gujarat’s anti-Muslim pogroms in recent years.
Not, it must be said, that caste discrimination is a peculiarly Hindu affair. The Pakistani braderi system, a rising force in British politics, is in fact the carrying over of ancestral caste into Indo-Islam. Caste persists even among Sikhs, founded though they were in a rejection of it, and also among people whose families have been Christian for many generations, even centuries.
But then, look at some of our own social habits when it comes to marriage-making, or eating, or even touching, or telling things about people from their names. Look at the work done by the Dalits, the Untouchables, in India, and then look at who does that same work here.
The Hindu nationalist BJP is now about as likely as the Congress Party to be the principal party of government in India. Within and allied to the BJP are violently fascistic elements such as the Shiv Sena and those who massacre Christians in Orissa. Leadership is passing to Narendra Modi, who is heavily implicated in Gujarat’s anti-Muslim pogroms in recent years.
Not, it must be said, that caste discrimination is a peculiarly Hindu affair. The Pakistani braderi system, a rising force in British politics, is in fact the carrying over of ancestral caste into Indo-Islam. Caste persists even among Sikhs, founded though they were in a rejection of it, and also among people whose families have been Christian for many generations, even centuries.
But then, look at some of our own social habits when it comes to marriage-making, or eating, or even touching, or telling things about people from their names. Look at the work done by the Dalits, the Untouchables, in India, and then look at who does that same work here.
Modi is banned from entering the EU, the US, and other relatively civilised places. However, last November and on David Cameron’s express instructions, he was paid court 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; where it is already being attempted, on the backs of hundreds of millions of people, it increasingly is being so treated. Including right here in the United Kingdom.
After all, David Cameron’s vehicles toured Ealing Southall blasting out in Asian languages that Hindu, Muslim and Sikh festivals would be made public holidays under his party. His “Quality of Life Commission” (don’t laugh, it’s real) then proposed giving the power to decide these things to “local community leaders”.
What else will those figures be given the power to decide in return for filling in every postal voting form in their households in the Bullingdon Boys’ interest, and making sure that all their mates did likewise?
To the statelets thus created – little Caliphates, little Hindutvas, little Khalistans, and so on – people minded to live in such places will flock from the ends of the earth, entrenching the situation forever.
Such would already appear to be well underway.
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