Pankaj Mishra's Warped World

Because we consider ourselves secular nationalists, we are intrigued -- no, confused -- by Amit's endorsement of Pankaj Mishra (who we've taken issue with before).

Writing in The New York Times, Mr. Mishra suggests that America's war on terror is somehow in the same league as the horrors of nazism and communism. Indeed, to Mr. Mishra, the greater threat is not from the nihilistic extremism of Islamists, but from those who are trying to protect modernity against barbarism. In his warped world, the minor transgressions of secular democracies trying to defend themselves are worse than the mind-numbing outrages of religious fanatics trying to kill us all. Why? Because, nazism and communism happened to be secular too. Perhaps Mr. Mishra needs to be educated on who defeated both those evil forces and saved us all from unbearable tyranny. Or perhaps he needs IQ injections.

The destructive potential of modern nationalism should not surprise us. Traditional religion hardly played a role in the unprecedented violence of the 20th century, which was largely caused by secular ideologies - Nazism and Communism. Secular nationalism has been known to impose intellectual conformity and suppress dissent even in advanced democratic societies. In America, it was at least partly the fear of being perceived as unpatriotic that held back the freest news media in the world from rigorously questioning the official justification for and conduct of the war in Iraq.

As for traditional religion, outside Saudi Arabia and Iran and Afghanistan under the Taliban it has rarely enjoyed the kind of overwhelming state power that modern nationalism has known. Then why reflexively blame religion for the growth of intolerance and violence?

Incidentally, this is written in the context of the Orhan Pamuk case in Turkey -- a situation that relates to a tyranny suppressing freedom of expression (we've ourselves condemned this here). In Mr. Mishra's view, non-democratic Turkey's misconduct is good reason to beat up on democracies like US & India. Here is an interesting paradox -- Mr. Pamuk, Mr. Mishra's essay subject, contradicts Mr. Mishra (and Amit) by pointing to religious nationalists in India as those suppressing free expression; he does not blame our secular state.

Read more about what Mr. Mishra has to say about India to know how much he despises our nation:

In all these countries, a growing middle class turned a blind eye to, or even actively supported, the suppression of ethnic minorities in the name of national unity. In democratic India, up to 70,000 people have died in Kashmir in a violent insurgency that the Indian news media have yet to honestly reckon with. In Russian Chechnya, civilians and journalists have been as much victims as Islamic rebels. And such is the power of Chinese nationalism that even most dissident intellectuals in the West feel that Tibet and Xinjiang are part of their motherland.

In one ridiculous lumping together, liberal India has been equated to illiberal Russia and China. Hello?

All this is so outrageous as to defy comprehension. Amit, do reconsider your endorsement of this poppycock -- please.