The Danger of Hindu Nationalism

So, I don’t want to be a downer here, but this is something that’s important, so although I typically don’t write opinion pieces, this is one.  Hindu Nationalism is a vocal minority in the world’s largest democracy, and so it’s a really big deal.  Using the IMF’s numbers, India is the second largest economy in the world.  The UN and World Bank rank them a little lower, but they’re still in the top 10 by pretty much any metric you look at.  India is #3 in terms of real GDP growth rate among countries with over 60 million people.  That’s ahead of touted up-and-coming economies like China, Vietnam, and the Philippines.  India’s rate of 7.3% is three times that of the United States, and they have the worlds fourth largest military (assuming North Korea’s numbers are correct and not over-inflated).

I hope that I’ve convinced you that India and her 1.2 billion people are important, because I’m going to start talking about Hindu Nationalism now.  Sometimes termed “Hindu polity,” Hindu Nationalism really started taking off in the early 19th Century in India, as a sort of response to the British occupation.  Uprisings against increasing British power had taken shape in the form of the Maratha Confederacy (I’ve got a post to do with that on Tuesday), the Sikhs in the North, and the Kingdom of Mysore in the South, but all of these had made little effect against the British Raj.  Indian political theorists began to argue that the only way that India could truly become Indian again would be to unite.

Well, that all sounds fine and dandy on the surface until you start thinking about it.  When had India ever been united?  Never.  Aurangzeb, the great Mughal Emperor, had managed to extend tentative control over the South,  but the speed with which his empire disintegrated after his death calls into question how much control the Mughals truly had.  So, where does the notion of “India” come from?  Well, it wasn’t a uniquely European idea, but it had not historical precedent until 1948, with India’s independence, and what did the Hindu Nationalists do to the man who had brought India’s independence about (Mahatma Gandhi)?  They shot him three times in the chest at point-blank range.  Hindu Nationalists don’t want a united India.  They want their united India, because there’s a right kind of India and a wrong kind of India.

Nathuram Godse, the man who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi, was a member of the RSS (Rāṣṭrīya Svayamsēvaka Saṅgha, or National Volunteer Organization), a controversial group that has admittedly done a number of good things. The RSS is well-known for its blood drives during the Bangladeshi Revolution in 1971 and responding quickly and effectively to humanitarian crises – often better than the government.  In 1975, when Indira Gandhi attempted to suspend the Constitution, the RSS were on the front lines protesting her, despite her unilateral suspension of the right to free speech.  I’m not here to tell you that the RSS is bad because they’re Hindu Nationalist.  I’m saying they’re dangerous and Hindu Nationalist and that there’s a strong correlation between having this far-right perspective and being dangerous.  The fact that the RSS has been associated in some way with almost every major Hindu Nationalist movement in the last forty years or so is concerning.  Its role in the destruction and vandalism of mosques is concerning.

Narendra Modi

The RSS is currently closely associated with the BJP – Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People’s Party) – the group currently in charge and from which Narendra Modi, the Indian Prime Minister, hails.  Typically the BJP prioritizes the globalization of India and the promotion of a robust, industrialized economy over social welfare (the MO of the Indian National Congress), and, although there’s far more nuance to it than this, one could potentially label the BJP as more similar in terms of economic policy to the Republican Party in the United States and the INC as more similar to the Democratic Party.  Socially, however, the INC would lie somewhere in the middle in the United States, while the BJP lies far to the right.

So a little on Modi now.  He was initially loved by the Western media.  I mean, this was a guy who was going to fix up Indian politics and fix up the economy, just like he had as Chief Minister of Gujarat state.  Economically, India’s done pretty well under him, but since his election in 2014, hundreds of violent attacks on non-Hindus, particularly Muslims, have been carried out with little response from the government.  People like to tout Modi’s success in Gujarat, but they seem to forget about a few little things that happened in 2002, when as many as 2500 Muslims were killed in February and March.

Local volunteers attempt to extinguish a train fire during the Gujarat Riots

Modi was incapable of reeling the violence in, which might lead one to question whether the BJP politician was even interested in stopping the anti-Muslim killings.  Critics will also point out that the violence was cleaned up when the violence started spilling over to Hindus.  Now, none of this can be officially tied back to Modi himself, and he has done a good job of keeping corruption at arm’s length away from him, but still, it happened on his watch.  When BJP politicians such as Manohar Lal Khattar are saying that they think people who eat beef should leave the country, it might suggest that the far right is not so far away from the BJP as one might like to pretend.

In the words of James Carville, “The economy, stupid.”  People don’t really care about civil issues that much when their pocketbooks are suffering.  I’m not saying that’s right – quite the opposite – but it’s also unreasonable to expect anything different, particularly in a country with so many people who cannot survive if their pocketbooks suffer, and when Narendra Modi can offer real economic change like he did in Gujarat, people are going to vote for him, particularly after years of domination by the INC.

Here’s my counterpoint, however.  There is a common-sense correlation, that is backed up somewhat by statistics, but the methods of gathering such data are suspect, between civil peace and economic growth.  Can we really expect people to go out and invest and spend money if they are afraid to do so?  If they are afraid that the government is hostile to their way of life?  Don’t forget that Modi’s successes in Gujarat came after the end of the 2002 riots.  If the BJP wishes to be an effective, uniting voice in Indian politics it is going to have to start reaching across the aisle, and as long as Modi continues to pretend that he has the majority and the mandate in New Delhi that he had in Gujarat, real socio-economic change will not happen.

Unifying Korea Is a Lot Older of a Problem Than You Might Think

To start our story, we’ll be going pretty far back – all the way to 238 CE in the Korean Peninsula.  The Han Dynasty in China had just fallen apart after an admirable 400-year run, and in its place, three rival emperors, each naming himself the rightful successor to the imperial throne, emerged.  For the purposes of our story, only one of these is important – Cao Pi, whose son, Cao Rui made an alliance with the Korean kingdom of Goguryeo in 238.

The Situation in Korea c. 350

The purpose of this alliance was primarily to re-subjugate the Gongsun Clan, which had grown increasingly powerful in the Northeast over the past few years.  The Gongsun campaign went fairly quickly, but thereafter Cao Rui’s kingdom, Cao Wei, saw little reason to remain allied with Goguryeo.  With King Dongcheon of Goguryeo’s raid on Wei territory in 242 (apparently he thought his old allies wouldn’t mind), the alliance broke down entirely, and in 244 and 245, the Wei army devastated Goguryeo’s army and countryside.  However, Wei never bothered to actually occupy Goguryeo, aside from a few following punitive expeditions, and so they allowed the kingdom to rise again.

Meanwhile, in the South, old tribal confederacies were beginning to form into hereditary monarchies.  The old Mahan Confederacy was consolidated into the Kingdom of Baekje under King Goi, and in the Southeast, a new kingdom called Silla emerged.  Between the two southern kingdoms lay the tiny, yet still influential, Kaya (also spelled Paya) Confederacy.

In the mid-4th Century, Baekje began expanding to the North, against her much larger neighbor of Goguryeo.  Goguryeo had been weakened by a coup in the year 300, and the following thirty-year reign of the ineffectual Micheon.  Micheon’s successor Gogugwon is perhaps more difficult to evaluate, but it was on his watch that the much larger and, until that point, more powerful Goguryeo was defeated by Baekje.  Gogugwon was killed in battle in 371, seemingly sealing the decline of Goguryeo.  Gogugwon’s successor, Sosurim, however, decided that if Goguryeo were to survive, it would have to modernize.  Sosurim set up several laws to decrease the power of individual clans and tribes and to increase national identity in his realm.

In 391, Gwanggeato ascended the throne of Goguryeo, at a time when there was still some mystery as to who the most powerful nation on the Korean Peninsula was.  Gwanggeato was only nineteen at the time of his accession, and he was thirty-nine when he died, but during his time on the throne, he forced every single southern country to pay him tribute and to recognize him as their suzerain.  Upon his death, the southern kings immediately stopped paying tribute, but the seeds of Korean unification had been planted.

Baekje would decline throughout the 5th Century, and in the early 6th Century, the name “Goguryeo” was changed to the somewhat more manageable “Goryeo.”  Over the course of the mid-6th Century, Silla would become the leading power in the South as it annexed the Kaya confederacy and, together with Baekje, they conquered the populous and wealthy Han River Basin.  Before Silla and Baekje could advance any father, however, their alliance broke down, and Silla began a series of wars with Baekje.  Silla gained the upper hand in these, partly because of their rigidly-organized society.  The so-called “bone rank system” was a sort of caste system for Koreans.  Clothing, estate size, and how far one may go to find a bride were all dictated by one’s societal class, and Baekje could never match this sort of state control.

The real impetus for Korean unification, however, came with the rise of the Sui Dynasty in China, under the half-Turkic general Yang Jian.  Yang Jian fought a small campaign against Goryeo, which the Korean kingdom managed to survive, but the common threat to the West began to concern the Koreans, particularly as Yang Jian’s son, the Emperor Yangdi, began preparing to launch a second, yet larger, offensive into Korea.  The Battle of Salsu in 612 was a watershed event in Korean history.  Allegedly, over 300,000 Chinese soldiers were slaughtered, crippling the Sui Dynasty.  Ordinarily, such a large number would be ignored, but the implosion of the Sui Dynasty that followed soon afterward lends some legitimacy to this claim.

The Sui Dynasty was soon followed by the Tang, who did not lose interest in the Korean Peninsula.  After a few failures against Goryeo, the Tang allied themselves with Silla, believing that Silla could become a client state of theirs.  Silla conquered Baekje in 660, despite intervention from Goryeo, and in 668, Tang and Silla forces subjugated Goryeo itself.  Now, the Tang deployed their “master stroke,” turning on Silla in 670.  After a six-year war, Tang and Silla agreed on a border at the Taedong River.

Traditionally, many Korean historians have called this the founding of a unified Korea, but when one actually looks at the map, it’s pretty clear that Silla did not hold all of the peninsula.

Silla and Balhae (we’ll talk about that in a second) around the year 700

The Tang would not hold on to the Peninsula for long, as a revolt from the Khitan people allowed the former territory of Goryeo, along with the Mohe people (ancestors of the modern Manchus) to establish their own kingdom called Balhae in 698.  For two centuries, this balance of power persisted, until in 892, with the onset of the Later Three Kingdoms Period.

In the ninth century, people had started to resent the bone rank system (who could have seen that coming?), and before long Silla began falling apart.  The kingdoms of Hubaekje (later Baekje) and Hugoguryeo (later Goguryeo) were established, almost as if people thought that repeating history would give them a more favorable result.  At first, Hubaekje was the most powerful kingdom, but King Taejo of Hugoguryeo took the upper hand, and by 940, Korea had been reunified, and Taejo’s campaigns against Balhae had given him control over the entire peninsula under the standard of Goryeo.

Historians still disagree as to whether Silla’s “unification” actually counts as a unification of Korea, and, as you might expect, the debate is highly politically charged.  Goryeo was a northern kingdom, and most of the historians doing the debating here are from the Republic of Korea – or South Korea.  As a result, they would love to portray history in such a way that might lend legitimacy to South Korea, rather than dwelling on a past when the North conquered the South.  If we can say that the first nation to unify Korea was a southern kingdom, however, it – after a certain sense – could make it seem like the Republic of Korea has a “right” to North Korea.  Of course, the honesty of the discourse on the history of Korean unification was largely influenced by the heavy censure of free speech that South Korea endured for most of the 20th Century.  In recent years, scholars have had a more honest debate that has begun to consider Goryeo’s conquest in the 10th Century the first time Korea – and all of Korea – was truly united.