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Just to be clear (since there seems to be an effort to misread my critique): I’m not interested in individuals or their specific back-stories. My call-outs are a critical push-back against the over-representation of Indian/savarna voices in every medium, in every space.
Western (white but also, more sadly, non-white) gatekeepers seem to almost reflexively reach for the ‘Indian’ artist/writer/activist/academic when they want a non-white/Global South perspective. This is not ok.
Arundhati Roy is an important voice but she cannot speak to every issue on earth (& shouldn’t be asked to), she cannot represent the Non-West. And yet she is consistently invited to do so. Let’s not even get into her breathtakingly dismissive response to Dalit critics.
Vijay Prasad’s CPI(M) partyline politics within the indian context appear to be a mystery to Leftist intellectuals & activists in the West & beyond (many of whom I deeply admire & respect).His long,pointed silence on Kashmir exemplifies this.
It makes no sense given his open and vocal support for Palestine, except if you understand that the Indian Left has always supported the Indian state’s stance that Kashmir is ‘an integral part of India’. You can look up Partha Chatterjee’s statements for another example of this.
But non-Indian Leftists are also unaware of the fact that he openly supported the violent attack by the West Bengal govt on striking workers & on peasants/tribals resisting the state’s acquisition of their land. Because West Bengal was ruled by a CPI(M) government.
Receipts: https://southasiarev.wordpress.com/2010/01/23/vijay-prashad-attacks-the-peoples-struggle-in-lalgarh-and-a-response/; http://sanhati.com/excerpted/3491/ ; https://www.marxist.com/india-nandigram-massacre-peasants060407.htm)
So . @nick_w_estes, it is with much respect that I urge you to give a hard pass to Vijay in the future, or at least hold him accountable for his political positions. *Especially* on Kashmir, a land violently occupied by India for 70+ years...
... whose indigenous population’s desire for sovereignty has been brutally suppressed, an occupation that is now being fully consolidated through the logic of settler colonialism in exactly the same way in which Israel is annexing what is left of Palestine.
This is the least that the people of Kashmir can expect in terms of solidarity from someone who is also engaged in a struggle against settler colonialism & for the right of his people, the indigenous inhabitants of the land, to live a life defined by freedom & self-respect
