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Sometimes you get random reminders that despite the recent prominence of a stridently illiberal streak, India has also historically been home to a very different kind of non-western syncretic liberalism.
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Love for India is pouring from around the world! On the occasion of India's 75th Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav, Grammy Award winner - @rickykej and 12 refugee singers from 4 nationalities pay tribute to the national anthem. Watch their melodious tribute here ⬇️
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Though this thing is produced by the rather ominous sounding ministry of culture, it’s not that different in tone from stuff voluntarily produced by Bollywood. There’s a whole genre of songs in Hindi, Urdu, Tamil etc celebrating a kind of universal liberal spirit.
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Fair question :) It’s far from perfect, but I’m glad at least a limited liberal streak exists, same as the US. Gotta take what you can get in these illiberal times.
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Replying to @vgr
Carefully chosen nationalities not to upset anyone… why “refugees” and not “residents”?
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Indian equivalent of Emma Lazarus new colossus huddled-starving-masses poem is a popular Sanskrit hymn “sarve bhavantu sukhinah” of obscure origin May All be Happy, May All be Free from Illness. May All See what is Auspicious, May no one Suffer. Om Peace, Peace, Peace.
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Quoting Sanskrit these days is a fraught matter with the BJP crowd claiming their particular spin on all Sanskrit content as authoritative, but there’s plenty of raw material for alt readings of tradition. This one was usually quoted in a liberal/progressive mode when I was a kid
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My favorite Bollywood song from this genre is probably this 1959 B&W classic, from a movie where an old Muslim man raises a Hindu orphan, and sings a song telling the child he’s going to be raised as a human, not a religious chauvinist.
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50s-70s were full of rather sweet romantic sentimentality of this sort. Starting in the 80s, Bollywood got much more gritty-realist about the darker realities. But the more sentimental idealism is genuinely felt as a real current in mass culture too. Not just propaganda.
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Big long history of struggle against it, similar to black civil rights in the US. It’s the political foundation of the modern Indian left, which is currently at a historical nadir of corruption and ineptitude sadly. Also much alt-religion historical, from Buddhism on.
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Replying to @vgr
What does that liberalism say about cast system?
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One reason I’m paying attention to such weak signals is that if these seeds of liberalism don’t take root again anew in a world facing massive climate crises and refugee flows, shit will get very, very dire. Don’t forget: almost all refugee flows are within the global south.
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The West seems to imagine it invented compassionate progressive liberalism, open global humanism etc, from whole cloth in 1960s hippie communes. Truth is: you’ll find this strain in every significant culture as far back as you care to look. Societies aren’t stable without it.
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Feels increasingly important to find and boost such signals everywhere in the world wherever you find them. Basic humanism has been steadily receding worldwide since the early 90s.
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Platitudes of the 80s now sound like heresies: it’s one planet, we’re all this together, cooperation and mutualism matter as much as competition and sovereignty, it’s good to help people swept up in wars/disasters/poverty, it’s not all just dismissible as a global woke conspiracy
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We gotta find a way to start nice-pilling people again 🤔 All the pills out there are permission-to-be-nasty pills.
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