Chronicles

Tag: philosophy

  • Debating AI

    Debating AI

    The content below is a summary of the arguments I presented during my debate with Gemini AI. Summary is also a product of Gemini’s infinite wisdom in TPUs.

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    …that was a very detailed and nuanced discussion. Your arguments focus on the critical shortcomings of the Nehruvian project and the idea that Nehru’s political choices inadvertently created and sustained India’s core internal and external challenges.

    Here is a summary of the main arguments you put forward:

    1. The Danger of Flawed Idealism (Nehru vs. Patel):

    The Thesis: Idealism, when based on a wrong hypothesis and neglecting ground facts or the policies of rivals, is more dangerous than pragmatism.

    The Critique of Nehru: Nehru’s idealism (e.g., in foreign policy) led to a strategic failure (e.g., ignoring Patel’s warnings on China and the security of Tibet) and favoured a moralistic approach (UN on Kashmir) over a decisive, realistic, and preemptive one.

    The Counter-View of Patel: Sardar Patel’s pragmatic, realist, and less state-socialist approach would have been more progressive and beneficial for national security and economic growth, despite being deemed “less progressive” by the prevailing socialist ideology of the time.

    2. Intellectual Inflexibility and Image Maintenance:

    The Argument: Nehru’s deep intellectual confidence and commitment to a specific ideology (democratic socialism) may have functioned as a shield to avoid honest debate and critical engagement with policy failures.

    The Consequence: This created a risk where unchallenged ideas and policies amounted to “gambling” with the future of one-fifth of the world’s population, leading to the institutionalisation of detrimental systems.

    3. Bad Policies vs. Good Intentions (Institutionalising Corruption):

    The Critique of the Economic Model: The construction of modern infrastructure and scientific institutions does not excuse the creation of the “License Raj” and the institutionalisation of corruption.

    The Mechanism: The excessive centralised state control and bureaucratic intervention required for Nehruvian planning created endless points for rent-seeking and stifled private enterprise and genuine growth for decades.

    4. Failure of Secularism and Internal Fragmentation:

    Flawed Secularism: Nehruvian secularism was not a tool for genuine reformation and integration for all minorities, but rather one of non-interference (e.g., failing to reform Muslim Personal Law while reforming Hindu law).

    External Exploitation: This selective approach created a sense of an “unintegrated” population (especially in regions like Kashmir and Bengal), which became the ideological justification and strategic leverage point for Pakistan, despite its meagre resources, to challenge India’s integrity and prosperity.

    5. Conclusion on Gandhi’s Vision:

    The final summation is that the implemented hybrid vision—a mix of Nehru’s modernism and a diluted version of Gandhian pluralism—led to the creation and sustenance of intractable enemies both internally (communalism/fragmentation) and externally (unresolved conflicts with Pakistan and China), ultimately hindering India’s true potential and security.

    —————-scary!!

  • In Light of India – III

    In Light of India – III

    The project of nationhood

    Octavio Paz was deeply aware of the rise of the right-wing Hindu nationalist party, the BJP, and the renewed Hindu-Muslim divide. While he acknowledges the inherently secular and moderate nature of Hindu traditions, he observes that radicalization began with Tilak and was later consolidated by Savarkar. The result was the by-product of neo-Hinduism (Hindutva): ): a monolithic vision of Hindu identity, territorially united and stripped of caste divisions—something unknown to Hinduism’s historically fluid, “history-less” culture. Drawing on his own experience of Mexican nationalism, Paz cautions against such rigid identity-making, where society is divided into the acceptable and the abominable:

    “All this would be funny were it not frightening. Nationalism is not a jovial god: it is Moloch drunk with blood…In India, many nations live together and they are all fighting with one another. One of them, Hindu nationalism, wants to dominate the others and subject them to its law – like an Aurangzeb in reverse. Another, in Kashmir, wants the state to unite with a hostile nation, Pakistan – thus ignoring the lesson of Bangladesh.”

    For Paz, the weakness of secular politics was equally troubling. He cites the Shah Bano case, when Rajiv Gandhi overturned a court ruling to appease conservative clerics, defying the constitution. He also points to Indira Gandhi’s authoritarian centralization of power as another example of expediency corrupting democracy. Having seen the disasters of socialist totalitarian regimes in Latin America, and the hollow triumphs of military nationalism, Paz insists that India’s national project must remain grounded in secularism and democracy, guarded by constant vigilance.

    Contraptions of Time

    Beyond politics, Paz also turned to India’s ancient philosophies, searching for deeper explanations of its society and history. He dwells on medieval and Vedic literature: its erotic art, its strict metrical forms, and its striking absence of sin when compared to Western traditions. He lingers on the Atharva Veda:

    “Time created the Lord of creatures, Prajapati.”

    “Desire (Kama) was the first to be born. Desire arose in the beginning which was the first seed of thought.”

    In Indian thought, sex is not sinful but vital, a regenerative energy at the core of life. Tantric traditions treated pleasure as a goal, though finite; the enlightened path required abstinence and meditation to break the chain of rebirth. Chastity, in this view, was strength for the great battle: liberation from time itself.

    Paz turns to the Bhagavad Gita and the Buddha to contrast two visions of life’s purpose—one active, one renunciatory—yet both converging toward transcendence. His reflections culminate in a phrase he once used in his Nobel lecture:

    “Every civilization is a vision of time.”

    For India, that vision was cyclical. The Maya of linear time was illusion; the real was Brahman (Absolute Being) and, at its depth, Atman (Self). Thus man was impermanent as the cosmos, and unreal as an apparition. Paz saw this metaphysical and social “negation of time” as having two consequences: first, it prevented the birth of history as a literary or scientific genre; second, it immobilized society in the form of caste. Invasions and upheavals were seen only as dissonances in a larger cyclical flow. This equilibrium, centuries old, was now being shaken by modernity—first among the elites, and increasingly among India’s middle class.

    Conclusion

    Paz ends In the light of India still seeking answers to the questions the country posed him. Along the way, he launches a scathing attack on the capitalist model of development, and revisits Gandhi’s forgotten alternative: Gram Swaraj. . Gandhi had envisioned a billion villages of farmers and artisans, bound by nonviolence and Dharma as the covenant between civilizations. Yet population growth and Soviet-style industrialization thwarted this dream, turning villages into pits of misery and despair.

    For Paz, the reformation of civilization must begin with a reflection on time itself. India had offered him that vision—cosmic, cyclical, inexhaustible—even as its politics and society wrestled with modernity.

    I would not have known how deeply personal India was to him, or how profoundly she inspired one of the finest thinkers and writers of our time to tell us what the people of India, seem to have irretrievably lost.

  • Israel and the Baiting Crowd

    When mythology becomes ideology and ideology becomes execution, a darker logic takes hold.

    The blood-curdling acts of cruelty unleashed on civilians in their homes—targeted killings, hostage-taking, and indiscriminate violence—mark a terrifying regression into primal forms of conflict. These actions, as witnessed in recent Hamas attacks, go far beyond political grievance or tactical warfare. They reflect an ideological totality rooted in an unredeemable vision of the enemy. In such a vision, there is no room for coexistence—only elimination.

    Radical Islamic terrorism, such as that espoused by Hamas, draws its fervor from literalist interpretations of religious texts. These scriptures, while diverse and often poetic, are seized upon by extremists to construct closed, absolutist narratives—myths that sanctify violence and demonize the other.

    Yuval Harari, in Sapiens, argues that Homo sapiens rose to dominance not through brute strength but through the unique ability to share stories—fictional narratives that enabled mass cooperation. Religion, like law and nationalism, is among the most enduring of these inventions. These stories—what Harari calls “gossip”—bind individuals into communities. But when transformed into dogma and wrapped in divine authority, they can become weapons.

    This is the foundation of radical Islamist ideology: where myth becomes command, and faith becomes justification for violence. The enemy is no longer just a political adversary, but a moral and ontological threat whose very existence defiles the sacred narrative. The religious story becomes a call to arms.

    The execution of this call finds disturbing resonance in Elias Canetti’s Crowd and Power. Canetti describes the “baiting crowd” as the most ancient and primal form of collective action. It forms around a quickly attainable goal: a victim, clearly marked, defenseless, destined. The crowd moves with single-minded purpose. Each individual strikes a blow, not out of strategy, but out of ritual. The killing is both symbolic and literal—meant to rid the group of its own fear, its own death. Yet paradoxically, after the execution, the crowd disperses, more anxious and fractured than before.

    This, then, is the horrifying convergence: Harari’s myth-making meets Canetti’s crowd impulse. The ideology draws legitimacy from scripture, and the crowd, believing in that narrative, acts it out with blood-soaked devotion.

    In the ideology of Hamas, we see this pattern laid bare. A theology that lionizes martyrdom and promises divine reward collides with a political fantasy of erasing Israel. The result is a mobilized crowd willing to kill and be killed—not as soldiers, but as believers acting out a sacred script.

    What makes this moment more dangerous is the global amplification of this narrative. Despite Hamas’s use of civilians as human shields, its genocidal charter, and its rejection of compromise, there is a rush—in parts of the Islamic world and among segments of the global left—to frame its actions as resistance rather than terror. Israel’s right to self-defense is questioned more than Hamas’s right to exist.

    This signals a disturbing moral inversion. Those who slaughter in the name of God are humanized. Those who retaliate to protect civilians are pathologized. The baiting crowd is no longer confined to streets or battlefields. It has gone virtual, networked, and transnational—spurred on by ideology, grievance, and a prophetic sense of historical destiny.

    Harari ends Sapiens with a warning: that humanity, having acquired godlike technologies, remains dangerously guided by prehistoric instincts. Unless we interrogate the stories we believe in—how they form, how they justify violence, how they sanctify crowds—we risk returning to the oldest form of brutality: the hunting pack, now cloaked in scripture and broadcast to billions.