Good time to kill demons?

April 2022 | Phi Magazine

In late 1945, India is on the cusp of her independence from Britain’s grip. Air is filled with debates on the kind of nation she’d go on to become. Amidst this, the man who, for good or worse, became the face of the Indian independence struggle was disagreeing with the man who would go on to become India’s first prime minister. Gandhi and Nehru argued through a series of letters.

Nehru wanted India to embark on a path to Western modernity through rapid industrialisation, urbanization and mass production. Too much time, he thought, has already been wasted. Gandhi thought otherwise. He dreamt of an India primarily made of small, self-sustaining village-communes. In a letter to Nehru, Gandhi says:

It may be that India too will go that way [the way of the West] and like the proverbial moth burn itself eventually in the flame around which it dances more and more furiously. But it is my burden to protect India and through India the entire world from such a doom. (October 5, 1945)

In his reply, Nehru resists.

I do not think it is possible for India to be really independent unless she is a technically advanced country. (October 9, 1945)

It was inevitable, Nehru and his contemporaries thought, that India’s road to happiness was the one that was mapped in the West.

In 1945, India was just about to shrug off a long colonial spell. She sat in the waiting room choosing her next train. For Gandhi, this was the time to make a choice: should we go down the way the West led? Or, should we define a radically new and Indian kind of modernity? For his political peers, this was an appealing vision, but not something actually possible.

Liminal spaces refer to areas between one destination and the next.

‘Between’ is the key word here. Major transformations occur in these spaces. But, because they are tucked in between here and there, they’re often imperceptible.

Soon after the 1989 fall of the Berlin wall, political scientist Francis Fukuyama announced “the End of History”. There was nothing left to debate. Liberal democracy and market capitalism had won. Country and country would soon align themselves to this way of life. We’d all travel together to the promised land.

During liminal periods, continuities become uncertain. The temporal dimension of liminality can refer to moments, weeks, months, years or centuries.

In 2003, the car manufacturing giant Tata Nano Singur proposed the construction of an automobile factory in West Bengal, India. The factory would displace millions of small farmers and petty producers away from their lands, to the cities. They protested vehemently. “England went through its pain to create its Londons and Manchesters, India will have to do so too”— this is how Amartya Sen reminds us of Akeel Bilgrami powerful analysis of post-colonial order. Bilgrami suggested that if India wished for prosperity, it would have to displace populations to the cities as the West did.

The economist Prabhat Patnaik points out, that when Londons and Manchesters were being made, the displaced British had places to go to — the colonies. More than 50 million people, in the nineteenth century, migrated to the colonial world; including Canada, India, Australia and West Indies. Displaced Indians move to crowded Indian cities where they become cheap labour for big capital.

During a rite's liminal stage, participants stand on the threshold, between a previous way of life and a new way.

From 9th August 2020 until 11 December 2021, for 1 year, 4 months and 2 days over two million farmers in India led a movement against three laws the Indian government had passed. Over 700 farmers died as a result. The government’s response to the protests included beating, leaving COVID-19 to do it’s job, and a relentless misinformation campaign.

In the end, the farmers won.

The laws would have enabled unconstrained profiteering by big capital, at the expense of small and medium farmers. They would have to hand over already precarious Indian agriculture at the mercy of the markets.

Liberal economists, both in India and the West (and of course, the IMF), explained to the farmers how the laws are good for the nation. Just like in the West, it was important that India reduced the proportion of the population dependent on agriculture. The industries in cities needed cheap labour where these farmers could migrate to; thereby bringing India to European levels of prosperity and bliss. There is no other way.

The farmers refused this. Farmer-activist Yogendra Yadav summarizes this refusal:

[The farmers showed that] Indian agriculture will follow an Indian path. Indian farmers are not vestiges of the past. They are here to stay. Agriculture can and will provide a dignified livelihood to a substantial population, many times more than it does in Europe or North America. Indian farmers are a repository of relevant knowledge and technology. Village India is not a dustbin of history. Rural India is a land of opportunities, and key to our national future.

Perhaps, India isn’t haunted by the ghost of what happened in Europe.

Twilight is sacred in Hinduism. Many rituals are performed at when the night, or the day, is just about to fade. Eating, amog other activities, is not advised during this time.

The Guardian. 24th May 2021: The EU is to introduce sweeping reforms of farming subsidies this week to try to halt the decline of small farms and protect them from the intensification of agriculture fostered by decades of previous policies. Janusz Wojciechowski, the EU agriculture commissioner, said: “My intention is that this process of disappearing small farms should be stopped. The European food sector in the past was based on small farms, and it should be in the future as well”.

The Guardian. 23rd May 2021: The Prince of Wales has called for small family farmers in the UK and across the world to come together in a cooperative movement using sustainable farming methods, and for their plight to be at the centre of environmental action.

10.

One of the incarnations of the Hindu god Vishnu, Narasimha, was born to kill the demonic king Hiranakashipa. The demon had a boon, that he could not be killed during the night or day, by a human or animal, neither inside the house nor outside. Lord Vishnu, as Narasimha, appears in a half-man half-lion form and kills the demon during twilight sitting on the frame of a door.

Liminal times are good times for killing demons.