That’s what I hear Prashant Kishor trying to tell the Gandhi clan of the grand old party in his incisive interviews with NDTV and Mojo Story.
Soniaji, Rahulji, and Priyankaji, with all due respect, you would do well to listen to this guy. He wants your party to continue being a strong, viable democratic alternative to the obscurantism of the BJP.
PK correctly identified BJP’s tripartite, winning formula as the rhetoric of Hindutva and Nationalism, matched on the ground with Welfarism.
The Congress needs to fight that with its own formula; utilizing the rhetoric of India and Federalism, matched on the ground with Employment and Growth.
That’s your message. Hone it down and regionalize as you deem fit. But stop playing this foolhardy game of 100% defense. Own your goddamn legacy, you guilded cage progressives, and don’t be afraid to throw some fucking punches. There are many of us who’ve been fighting these fascists for decades without any of your feudal backup or old wealth; You owe those of us who’ve kept punching up at the BJP (even as we wait patiently for you to adjust your fighting stance).
As far as the party’s Prime Ministerial face? One who can fight good fights as the face of the party for multiple election cycles? An electioneering face who can also be the face of governance?
It has to be someone with Hindi as their native tongue. I say this as a South Indian, mind you; But there is no way anyone from the east or south can be that face right now (unless they’re chosen post-coalition-making, a la Deve Gowda). If the Congress is going with an electioneering face, they would do well with a person from the Hindi heartland, preferably Dalit or OBC but with a very generically Hindu last name. Preferably from central India because the political parties of the south and east will always, by and large, resist the BJP in their regions but can’t challenge them in the north. Only a native Hindi speaker from the Congress party can do that. So someone, say, of Bihari origin, but educated in Delhi. Someone who’s also a gifted orator, with salt-of-the-earth roots, possessing a razor sharp intellect. Someone who’s guaranteed to bring in the votes left of the Congress, but also someone who can be a strong opposition voice to a weakened BJP central government in 2024, thus creating the foundation to win electoral battles beyond 2024.
Yeah, the Congress ain’t winning in 2024. But it can do better than 2019. Much better in fact (if the trends of the recent mood of the nation survey are anything to go by).
To do that however, the party bosses have to listen to the Prashant Kishors of the world. And they need to realize that their political candidates are the Kanhaiya Kumars of the world. The only Gandhi with even half a chance is Priyanka, not Rahul. She is absolutely doing the right thing focusing on galvanizing the women’s vote, and it’s perhaps first viable for her to look at getting the CM’s chair in Uttar Pradesh before making a push for Delhi.
But not yet. Maybe after at least one more non-Gandhi gets a chance to be PM. There are a lot of people who distrust the Gandhis and the BJP alike; And the Congress can still win many over with the right moves and adequate ego adjustments by the party bosses.
Until then, take full reigns of the party and foster candidates who capture the imaginations of India’s diverse masses. Don’t forget the words below:
Karmanye Vadhikaraste Ma Phaleshu Kadachana
To put it more succinctly…
Fight.
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Experimenting with a new format to produce an abridged geopolitical post with hypotheses and verifiable secondary sources for the reader to explore should they desire to do so.
My method of pop culture and geopolitical research, which has generally been the case for past pieces of such a nature, is as follows: When I take breaks from my daily responsibilities I watch/listen to either geopolitical podcasts, or mma videos, and occasionally will listen to a philosophy or popular science podcast (mostly to sound pretentious). I follow this up by looking up articles and papers when I have a moment to do so on the topics that interest me the most (usually when I have bouts of insomnia or when I’m on the crapper). I use these secondary sources as a way of bolstering the general hypotheses (written in bold, El-Cucuy style #champshitonly) that I dare to have about these issues.
Onward…
Drones Are Levelling The Asymmetric Warfare Playing Field In A Once In A Generation Way
Not unlike the bow & arrow or hand-held rifle, weaponized drones are a gamechanger for significantly disempowered geopolitical actors waging asymmetric warfare against vastly more powerful ones. Take groups like Yemen’s Houthi rebels fighting against a vastly more powerful Saudi-led coalition, or Lebanon’s Hezbollah fighting against the ridiculous military might of Israel. Drones even the playing field in a big way. They provide relatively inexpensive ways for the less powerful nation or group to bleed the wealthier, more powerful nation. This way they can accelerate ceasefire negotiations as equals across a diplomatic table.
There are other ways in which weaponized drones are changing the military game. Take two small, somewhat evenly matched states fighting over a swathe of territory like the recent Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Drones were an absolute game changer for Azerbaijan smashing Armenia. Or take two mismatched regional powers, like Israel and Iran, with Israel having far greater military power and geopolitical heft than Iran. Iran has nonetheless been able to challenge Israel, often toe-to-toe in proxy battle theaters, with its own drone warfare adding heft to their traditional proxies (and this despite Israel being the world leader in drone technology). Drones can be engineered or reverse-engineered by anyone. Like the Enfield bolt-action in the 19th century, or the AK-47 in the 20th century, there’s no question about it – drones are evening the asymmetric warfare playing field.
Uttar Pradesh Election 2022 Trends Suggest A Wounded But Victorious BJP (With A Likely Modi Victory In 2024)
It pains me to say this, but it seems that, while the BJP is going to be wounded by their attempts to sell out India’s farmers to the highest bidders, UP is not Punjab. Their Hindutva-Welfarism still holds currency among a sizeable chunk of the electorate, including their upper-caste Savarna base, and portions of the OBC and SC communities. The BJP is likely going to be the single biggest party, thought not with the 312 out of 403 seats they have now, but more likely in the early to mid 200s. The Samajwadi Party will come in second for damn sure, the question is whether they can run the BJP close, and this could well be possible with India’s age-old protections against fascism – chaos and competition – potentially affecting the BJP in India’s largest state. This might be the best case scenario for the parties trying to uproot the BJP; With the SP leading the anti-BJP coalition, and the RLD, BSP, and Congress as the three likely players in distant third, fourth, and fifth positions, but with potentially enough seats to put an SP-led coalition over the mark (with enough sops that is). This remains the less likely outcome, but really the only route for an opposition coalition to come to power. The likelier outcome is, as I mentioned, a wounded BJP government in Lucknow.
Funnily enough, a weaker Yogi government in UP might be a blessing in disguise for Modi and Shah to retain their thrones in Delhi come 2024. Modi does not want a powerful Yogi in UP; a powerful chief minister now nursing potential prime ministerial ambitions. I doubt Shah wants that either because with Yogi challenging Modi, Shah might never realize his own ambitions at the PMO – with a newly empowered Yogi doing to Shah, what a rising Modi did to Advani during the end of the Vajpayee-Advani era of the BJP. Right now, Shah is a clear second-in-command (and some would say he holds the real strings over Modi, though I think those speculations are exaggerated). Modi and Shah want to rule India for as long as they possibly can. They have a great working relationship, built on garnering power and no small amount of ideological unity points. Some might even say, it would be in their interests for a wounded Yogi to limp into power on a regional NDAesque coalition in UP. They are already cutting Yogi down to size (the party’s publicity images have Modi basically big-brothering a petulant Yogi in the staged photo-ops). The Modi acolytes can claim Modi did all he could to save Yogi from embarrassment (and they would be partially right), Modi and Shah can launch a concerted bid for 2024 having successfully played defense in 2022. It is a sobering thought, but it is important, as someone who’s trying to adhere to reason and rationality, to remain true to facts. It’s quite possible that the BJP have to drive India further down the toilet than they already have for them to lose power at the center. They are well capable of that as their hubris and megalomania seems to have few limits. It will eventually lead to their downfall, but I think they still have a few more years in them. The Savarna middle classes of North India, and some other parts of the country, have also expressed a bafflingly undying loyalty for the BJP that can be classified as nothing other than a sociopathic mass delusion. I would be thrilled beyond belief if they got smashed, but I just don’t see that happening…yet.
And Finally, Chaos – Of The Caste And Regional Kind – Will Always Resist Hindutva
I have said it before. The caste, clan, linguistic, and regional identities of India will always be resistant to any homogenizing Hindu nationalist project. They will be bought over and will be negotiated with, but they will never give in to the homogenization. Not because of some higher morality. Far from it. It’s because there is too much entrenched power, cultural and political, behind these identities. There are too many vested socioeconomic interests preventing people and communities from being homogenized into some shallow fascist project (in a country where even the fascists can’t stop themselves from developing a crabs-in-a-bucket mentality). This doesn’t mean mini pogroms or mini projects of cultural genocide and ethnic persecution won’t keep happening. They will. But I think there is far more rational, organic resistance to Hindutva than your average, bratty English-speaking, progressive might give credence to.
The above map was provided by a certain Allice Hunter. It is a map of the Indian diaspora, darker the place, the more there are of us, the largest diaspora in the world if anyone is wondering (no prizes for guessing where India is). These people are often referred to as NRIs or non-resident Indians. I am one such person, and I’m coming to terms with that identity.
The above map is also a map of global Indian privilege, which is (as most things Indian are) guided excruciatingly obviously by historical caste privilege.
Now, as I try to grapple with the overriding fact that randomness guides so much of where we exist, who we are, and what we do – as living beings from a galactic, cosmic perspective that is – it leads me to smaller reflections around the way class and privilege operate within the microcosm of our human societies.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that whatever I have in terms of material wellbeing and social security is in no small part because I had the random, dumb luck to be born a privileged as fuck brahmin boy, in a patriarchal Hindu society.
For instance, I just learnt at the age of 41 that the ethno-linguistic sub-community I come from (Tamil Brahmins) is less than 2 million. This is not a poor community globally and let me tell you, I thought the number would be much larger. My fellow Tam Brams have garnered a lot of economic, educational, and political clout all across the globe. Indeed, not unlike sections of the Jewish community, the Tamil Brahmin community could be thought of as the “Ashkenazim of India” – at least according to Sadanand Dhume in an article praising the community as an “overachieving” one akin to their Jewish comparatives.
This is praise that your average Tam Bram is, of course, happy to wallow in. Not unlike the self-praise any community profers on itself.
Now, Tam Brams are about 0.15% of the Indian population (not fifteen percent, but a fifteenth of a fucking percentage point). Hell, the entire caste of brahmins constitute less than 4% of India’s population, distributed all over India. And yet, they are sensationally over-represented among the most privileged sections of the NRI community, which in and of itself can count itself lucky to be “NR” compared to the hundreds of millions who sweat and toil in the motherland – whose backs we have spring boarded off to foreign lands for opportunity and fortune; Foreign lands where we can conveniently erase the oppression from which we have benefited, and continue to benefit, from. And make no mistake about it, the only reason we are in these foreign lands, leading materially better lives than 99% of India, is because we come from families that managed to hoard land, education, or both, in order to get us there. We do the same for our kids so they can become elected leaders and captains of industry in those foreign lands that we happily integrate into, while trumpeting the great “culture” and “spirituality” of the land we just escaped. (Just so everyone is clear I ain’t knocking the rationale, just the inequality of access to a better life, is all.)
In any case, as a way of dealing with the self-hatred I’m finding myself mired in, I’ve decided to become a fifth column windmill tilter, the anti-brahmin brahmin, invoking my fifteen year old self who flushed his poonal down the toilet (I only did the fucking ceremony to make my parents happy and I wish I had the spine at that time to say no).
This blog will have to do for now, until some other platform makes itself available.
To that end, beyond ranting and raving, I wish to deconstruct a fascinating piece by mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik, where he lays out the history and origins of caste hierarchies.
He starts with this pointed observation (and this really should be read in full by any outsider who has interacted with Indians describing their understanding of the caste system):
“Many people say that India’s caste system is simply a rational division of labour to promote efficiency and effectiveness. Those who say this usually associate themselves with the top two tiers (Brahmin and Kshatriya), less commonly with the third tier (Vaishya) and hardly any with the fourth tier (Shudra). If anyone says I am proud to be a Shudra, it is more from a sense of rebellion than wisdom or affection. And if people are proud to be Brahmin and Kshatriya, it has more to do with the desire to be dominant and less to do with wisdom or affection.”
Word for word, this is true. The Brahmin-Baniya-Kshatriya (i.e. Savarna) classes of India and the diaspora replicate this behavior.
Indeed, these same people, while abroad and gleefully wallowing in model minority status, will benevolently stand in solidarity with minorities in those countries or even far out struggles like Palestine (as was my, ultimately hypocritical, coping mechanism); All while fully cognizant that their own privileges were granted through millennia upon millennia of caste oppression.
And those privileges are very real, mind you.
As Pattanaik says:
“Vedas do speak of a diverse society. The dominant members of society, the Brahmins, the land-owners, the rich and the powerful, turned this concept of diversity into a hierarchical society. They did it using the Dharmashastras. In the Dharmashastras, including Manusmriti, the Brahmin jatis mapped themselves to Brahmin varna. They were not interested in mapping the thousands of other jatis.“
This is older than any other current structure of classism and racism mind you. Older than any of the various Abrahamic religions’ hierarchies of generational, indentured labor.
Vedic casteism might just be one of the original forms of patriarchy and social hierarchies. The following two paragraphs where Pattanaik deconstructs the system, highlight just how ancient these practices are:
“The chatur-varna system or the four-fold division of society was the hallmark of Vedic society. But it is completely theoretical, probably based on “aptitude” rather than “birth” but one is not entirely sure. The four tiers were – transmitters of Vedic lore (the Brahmins), those who controlled the land (the Kshatriyas), those who controlled the markets (the Vaishyas) and the service-providers (the Shudras).
In practice, Indian society has long been divided into jatis. There are thousands of jatis, as against four varnas. When people say caste, they are referring to a European term used to explain jati, not varna. We often confuse the two. Jati was an economic-political unit, based on vocation. You inherited your jati from your father. Jati was established by a relatively simple idea called “roti-beti”: you ate with members of your own jati, and you married a boy or girl from your own jati. A jati functioned like a tribe. Just as inter-tribe marriage is not permitted, inter-jati marriage was not permitted. Crossing jati lines could lead to violence.“
This continues to this day. Do not ever let any members of the hitherto ruling castes in India or the diaspora fool you into thinking otherwise.
But here’s the kicker. They genuinely think they’re better than you. The same way fundamentalist Muslims, Christians, Jews, Sikhs, or adherents of any other religious ideology think they’re better than everyone else, these fundamentalist Hindus think they’re better than everyone. As someone with deep insider knowledge, I can assert this to be true and then some. The stories, lifestyles, and narratives I grew up with as a member of one of the most privileged castes in India should make any genuinely progressive, thinking human being shudder with indignation.
Pattanaik explains why:
“Every society in the world has economic and political hierarchies. What makes the jati system unique is the hierarchy of purity. Some service-providers were deemed “dirty” and denied access to the village well and even human dignity. This is the worst aspect of the caste system, something that is often denied by apologists.“
This is the kicker. The function of purity (with patriarchal guardrails).
All religious ideologies have it.
But it takes on a whole new sense of geographic contiguity and temporal scale with Hinduism in India.
It must be dismantled and rendered to the trash heap of history.
Savarna Hindu culture has some of the oldest traditions of misogyny and sexism.
(and they probably don’t like talking about it when bringing up the thousands of years of great Hindu culture they like to celebrate…)
Your average upper caste Hindu male in all likelihood has had a pathetic, soft upbringing while being socially feted for achieving precious little other than being born with a penis.
Raja Beta, so the culture projects…
Raja, king. Beta, son.
Oh, have I mentioned that India is ranked 140 (and falling) in the gender gap index?
Yes indeed.
There are only 156 countries that are ranked, so there’s really not that far to go before the country hits rock fucking bottom.
Holy fucking regression, Batman!
*sigh*
You know, there are many reasons Sus and I choose to raise our family in America. It’s a helluva nicer life with more liberal social moors.
But above all, the single biggest reason is because America, while not perfect by any stretch of imagination, is far, far better for women and girls on average than India is. More freedom, greater opportunities, and lesser inequality.
The misogyny and sexism in India is off the charts.
Sorry raja betas… y’all a bunch of sociopathic little shits and you’re dragging the country down with your insecurities and ignominies.
Raja beta…pfft
Raja chutiye hai sab.
Arrey…
Sab savarna manuwadi chutiyapan se hua he.
Kaun hai ye andh bhakt log… desh barbaad kar rahe hai…haraam zaadey scumbag chutiye bastards.
Fuck ’em.
No surrender.
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Ahmad Shah Massoud’s 4-phase strategy has great validity for the current struggle that the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan is waging to bring about a more moderate Islamic republic with greater rights for women and minorities. They struggle against the more hardline Islamic emirate that the Taliban is currently establishing by force, something Massoud Sr stood staunchly against.
It feels like this attritional battle can be won via popular support for a moderate Islamic republic, by doing two things: (a) ensuring that aspirational hope for choice and opportunity is internalized by the the average Afghan, and (b) ensuring the same average Afghan realizes that a moderate Islamic republic is the way to achieve this as opposed to the misogynistic autocracy of the Taliban. Massoud Sr’s strategy provides a great blueprint to achieving this.
{First, a note for naysayers who suggest that the NRFA shouldn’t be supported because it’s got the likely support of the CIA, or that it has corrupt warlords among its alliance: This world is not perfect and striving for perfectionism is a fools errand. This is a battle against a misogynistic feudal autocracy. It is going on across the subcontinent. It is not Afghanistan’s problem alone, and no doubt we must be wary of one fascist using another fascist to hide their own human rights violations. For instance, those gleeful Hindutwadis who look at what’s going in Afghanistan with sick delight are the same people who support the Hindu Taliban in India, and their misogynistic feudal autocracy in states like Uttar Pradesh. So this fight against religious fundamentalist ideologies like Salaffism, Wahabbism, Savarna Manuwadism, Baniya-Brahminism, and other obscurantist garbage is pretty pan-subcontinent.}
Anyway, back to the Lion of Panjshir and his strategy…
With each phase of Massoud Sr’s strategic plan, comes distinct advantages and challenges in today’s global context. The two biggest possible differences in the last 40 years are: (1) the rapid spread and anarchic democratization of digital communication, along with (2) the multi-polarity of imperial capital.
Let us address each of the four phases of Massoud Sr’s ultimately successful plan, keeping in mind these two critical geopolitical shifts:
Phase 1 – Establish a popularly based resistance front that has the loyalty of the people. For the sake of establishing a usable framework, I’m going to assume that the NRFA is in this current phase and building towards Phase 2. Here, like Massoud Sr did in the 80s and 90s, it would be absolutely critical for the NRFA to utilize its rank and file to prove that life for the average Afghan will be materially, spiritually, and socially better under the moderate Islamic republic governance of the various parties under the NRFA, as opposed to the hardline autocracy of the Taliban. Training of a popular peoples army, which is already likely underway, is done in this phase. For 2021 in the age of social media, it feels like non-violent, civil disobedience actions in other parts of Afghanistan are an absolute must via the activation of disaffected groups there, including tribal factions who are getting hammered by the Taliban, minorities, democracy-seekers, and religious moderates.
Phase 2 – “Active defense” of the Panjshir stronghold, while carrying out asymmetric warfare. It is also quite possible that the factions of the NRFA are already variously in this phase. Massoud Sr essentially established a strategy of liberate-consolidate-repeat in a district by district manner. This is akin to many guerilla strategies of popular liberation across the world, but Massoud Sr necessarily had to make it bespoke to the specifics of the region’s objective conditions and subjective forces. So once Panjshir is firmly established as a liberated zone (and thus in Phase 2 or 3) Phase 1 is conducted by the NRFA in geographically and socially contiguous regions. Here, for 2021, I believe the usage of international solidarity groups from across the world would be of significant benefit to the resistance. Internationals are generally more protected than locals in terms of upping the ante on the rhetoric against fascist regimes and publicizing the atrocities of those regimes on social media. I have been a Palestine-solidarity activist for a long time and have personally seen the social landscape shift in America with the consistent usage of solidarity visits and actions. It has been a game changer in the movement and has essentially cornered Israel (a staunch American ally no less) into being seen, correctly, as a fascist state. With the NRFA and Afghanistan however, I believe it would be more prudent to organize solidarity visits from Muslim-majority countries, especially moderate regimes who also have a lot of sway with the more hardline regimes, including the explicitly fascist ones, who are either supporting the Taliban or playing the waiting game.
Phase 3 – “Strategic offensive” phase which seeks to gain control of large parts of Northern Afghanistan. Massoud Sr established the Northern Alliance as the counterweight to the Taliban in this phase. In 2021, this absolutely must include demonstrations, civil disobedience, and agitations specifically calling for a nationwide election, which the Taliban can participate in as a political party. The “Northern Alliance” of 2021 is the “Islamic Republic of Afghanistan” with Saleh as its current caretaker president. Needless to say, there needs to be a specific shift in the Panjshir leadership of Saleh, Massoud, and Khan to equally promoting strong, popular leaders into a cohort of sorts that can run in general elections. It cannot just be the Panjshir Resistance or Northern strongmen, but it must legitimately be representative of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan for it to have any chance of uprooting the Taliban.
Phase 4 – “General application” of phases towards regaining control of the whole country using similar tactics. In 2021, it feels like this has to be done in as democratic a way as possible, no matter how corrupt and shoddy that democratic process is. In other words, once enough provinces have been liberated, those members of the NRFA who wish to establish a moderate Islamic republic in Afghanistan need to provide adequate governance to those provinces that have been liberated, while calling for immediate nationwide elections. They then have to win a majority of those elections, and reduce the Taliban to a political party, albeit a likely very powerful one. The Taliban have to be cornered into accepting some kind of tribal democracy, with a likely stalemate for a while where the Taliban controls some provinces, while other provinces of Afghanistan controlled by moderate parties, establishing some greater freedoms for women and minorities. Equally importantly is to play up the infighting factions of the Taliban against one another via temporary, tactical alliances – through phases 3 and 4.
Again, not perfect, but better for the people by at least giving them options of choosing a moderate Islamic society to live in or a hardline one. This can be achieved through the strategic use of international capital interests, social media, and, most importantly, establishing the resistance as the popular aspirational hope of the average Afghan. Doesn’t sound romantic, but it has proven to be effective.
Because you know who else is doing that to great effect?
The Taliban.
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Tajikistan, India, and France are, at first glance, the strangest geopolitical grouping one can think of.
But upon closer inspection, it is in all three countries’ sovereign rational interests to form an alliance in support of the Panjshir Resistance (officially the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan or NRFA), regardless of the political inclinations of their respective governments.
Dushanbe, New Delhi, and Paris must start a global alliance to support the NRFA with the following four objectives in mind:
Recognize the NRFA caretaker government as the legitimate representative of the Afghan people and their aspirations.
Send money, food, medicine, and defense hardware to Panjshir, the NRFA, and their allies.
Lobby their respective geopolitical spheres of influence to do the same and immediately call for democratic elections that the Taliban can participate in as a political party.
Send delegations to meet the NRFA and to lobby the Taliban to accept democratic elections to determine a sovereign Afghanistan’s future.
As rational actors, this makes sense for these three countries and many more.
We live in a world of increasing multi-polarity, however uneven. The Taliban is propped up by a Pakistani state apparatus that is controlled by Chinese monopoly capital. (With Russia perhaps trying to wedge its way as a significantly junior partner to China.)
These governments do this in some harebrained plan, thinking they can control Afghanistan.
The NRFA needs to slowly gather international support that can counter these forces, in order to apply a genuinely sovereign Afghan solution to a problem created by multiple imperialist and regional powers.
And there are plenty, plenty, of rational state actors in the region and beyond, who would support the NRFA just to counter the power plays of those countries, not to mention the fears of an ascendant Taliban.
Tajikistan has already taken a giant step forward that India and France must replicate, following which a much larger global alliance explicitly in support of the NRFA can take shape.
This can neither be about sentimentalism nor perfectionism.
No doubt there will be corruption and abuse within such resistance fronts that will necessarily build tactical partnerships with unsavory opportunists, warlords, and patriarchs.
We must however remember that a patriarchal, feudal kleptocracy is still preferable to a brutally misogynistic, fundamentalist autocracy. The former at least has a fighting chance of fostering a social rationale towards a less feudal, more democratic society, with greater individual choice and safety nets.
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This is just my personal opinion as a supporter of the Panjshir resistance:
I believe that Massoud and Saleh, along with their people and supporters, need to put themselves in a position to be attractive to international capital.
This means presenting a case for bigger actors, state and private, to supporting the Panjshir resistance and its allies as the likeliest to usher in an Afghanistan that will be open to (*gag*) international markets, both consumer and labor.
Cold hard economics will beat the Taliban over anything else.
Even if there’s an asymmetric power-sharing stalemate of Panjshir and a few northern regions ruled by the National Resistance Front, with the rest of Afghanistan under Taliban rule…the attritional battle can still be in favor of eventually moving to a tribal-party democracy with the Taliban reduced to a Pashtun Islamist party (albeit a very powerful one but still preferable to it’s current ascension as an autocratic, brutal government).
Oh… And I hope the resistance is investing in some game changing defense technology like drones (just think recently how Azerbaijan thrashed Armenia using them).
The advantage that Massoud, Saleh, and their supporters have is that – because the Taliban is expressly Salafi Islamist – the Panjshir resistance can easily win the nationalist argument (made with megaphones).
If they can win the economic one (made via back channels) they guarantee an endless supply of support from international capital.
Then they just have to wait for the Taliban to implode.
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It is beyond tragic seeing how obscurantist and backward India is rapidly becoming under these Savarna fascist scum of the BJP and their acolytes.
The Brahmin-Kshatriya-Baniya order, borne out of age-old, misogynistic, Manuwadi filth needs to be reduced to a laughing stock and thrown into history’s garbage dump. We need a system borne out of humanism and rationalism. It’s not that complicated. Secular godlessness and gender equality are far and away the two clearest indicators of societal progress and overall wellbeing.
These Hindutva fools are ruining the land and traumatizing society. It’s time to reclaim Hinduism and India from these fascist patriarchs.
We’ve done it before. I’m sure we can do it again.
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The caste atrocities in the land of my birth are even more brazen with the rising tide of Hindu fascism. Dalits are murdered, raped, and humiliated daily. Little has changed for millennia.
This is not hyperbole.
Precious fucking little has changed for millennia.
As I watch with a helpless rage…
It feels appropriate right now to at least state for all eternity that – just like the elite power mongers of other religions – Hindus who uphold the poison of a Savarna Manuwadi caste order are my sworn enemy. Even if they’re of my own blood.
For, within and without, this poison must be eradicated.
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love liberation struggle 
