Well written! It is necessary to shift our gaze towards the elephant in the room of Indian politics, i.e., Lohia. The man who, much like Marxism, has seeped into various political ideologies and influenced them in his own way. Lohia won the longer battle and has threatened both Nehruvian secularism and Savarkarite Hindutva equally. He is not Gandhi, not Nehru, not Savarkar, not Ambedkarism but gathers all the elements from them that could make for a potent pan-India anti-elitist ideology. Nobody can be credited more for inverting the triangle than Lohia. Kudos to Manomay for this effort.
I only disagree about the Sanskritised Hindi imposition part. Many Reg Languages are organically more Sanskritised than Hindi. Like Bangla being an Eastern Indo-Aryan language has more Sanskrit derived Tatsama (& ofc TatBhava) in daily usage than Colloquial Hindi (which is nothing but Urdu in Devnagari with lesser Farsi aka Hindusthani) or even the artificial Sanskritised Hindi ( which isn't organic while ours is already deeply organic). So Reg lang for local purposes or even national integration via mutual exchange & Modern Sanskrit (Sanskrit Bharati? ) shall be our version of Israelite Hebrew rejuvenation with English for technical purposes.
Lohia has no mass appeal today. His protégés and their descendants do.
While it is politically useful to attack the intellectual lineage that they come from, attacking Lohia himself is of little value.
Industrialization, wherever, it has happened in India, has followed a set sociological mechanism —
The dominant caste elites (OBCs or not) have a compact around industrial growth.
So while they might vent at Brahmins or at each other, they do not politicise industry itself. A large number of elites straddle the world of both industry and politics.
This is the case in TN, AP, Maharashtra, and to an extent Gujarat.
No such compact emerged in the Gangetic plains. One might perceive of it as a general lack of wisdom among the elites of the dominant castes of these states.
The goal, for those of us who wish to see the Gangetic plains prosper, should be the establishment of this compact.
One cannot wish away caste politics and politics of grievance. But one can at least try to take certain issues off the table so as to reduce the contested ground.
Well written! It is necessary to shift our gaze towards the elephant in the room of Indian politics, i.e., Lohia. The man who, much like Marxism, has seeped into various political ideologies and influenced them in his own way. Lohia won the longer battle and has threatened both Nehruvian secularism and Savarkarite Hindutva equally. He is not Gandhi, not Nehru, not Savarkar, not Ambedkarism but gathers all the elements from them that could make for a potent pan-India anti-elitist ideology. Nobody can be credited more for inverting the triangle than Lohia. Kudos to Manomay for this effort.
I only disagree about the Sanskritised Hindi imposition part. Many Reg Languages are organically more Sanskritised than Hindi. Like Bangla being an Eastern Indo-Aryan language has more Sanskrit derived Tatsama (& ofc TatBhava) in daily usage than Colloquial Hindi (which is nothing but Urdu in Devnagari with lesser Farsi aka Hindusthani) or even the artificial Sanskritised Hindi ( which isn't organic while ours is already deeply organic). So Reg lang for local purposes or even national integration via mutual exchange & Modern Sanskrit (Sanskrit Bharati? ) shall be our version of Israelite Hebrew rejuvenation with English for technical purposes.
Lohia has no mass appeal today. His protégés and their descendants do.
While it is politically useful to attack the intellectual lineage that they come from, attacking Lohia himself is of little value.
Industrialization, wherever, it has happened in India, has followed a set sociological mechanism —
The dominant caste elites (OBCs or not) have a compact around industrial growth.
So while they might vent at Brahmins or at each other, they do not politicise industry itself. A large number of elites straddle the world of both industry and politics.
This is the case in TN, AP, Maharashtra, and to an extent Gujarat.
No such compact emerged in the Gangetic plains. One might perceive of it as a general lack of wisdom among the elites of the dominant castes of these states.
The goal, for those of us who wish to see the Gangetic plains prosper, should be the establishment of this compact.
One cannot wish away caste politics and politics of grievance. But one can at least try to take certain issues off the table so as to reduce the contested ground.
> Dr. Ambedkar hated villages, unlike Veer Savarkar, who supported urban centers
Mistake?