Pammi on Culture

Culture operates in humans largely unconsciously. Cultures that have been around for a long time have layers that the average human cannot penetrate with his conscious mind (but rather is operated on - a sort of puppet). However certain of those layers are called into consciousness by external agents and forced to overstay their welcome. At which point that layer will try to turn on the invisible layers but will only either end up tearing the host apart or be expelled itself from consciousness.
When we apply this to India in the time of Hindutva we see the full effects. Indians have multi dimensional identities most of which exist dimly in consciousness. The imposition of the "Hindu" identity is done not with positive association but rather as anti-Muslim. And the Muslim Indian is likewise pigeonholed. This has been the standard operating procedure in Indian politics where caste divisions have likewise been exploited by the rulers. But caste divisions are more real in the sense that the country's population, being largely made up clans of families bound by endogamy and economy, identifies itself largely on these lines. With the advent of urbanisation and a tentative distancing from this identity, it has become possible to exploit the purely anti-other feeling on a religious basis.
The problem with governing the country on such a basis is that policy formulations will inevitably fail due to the simplistic construction of identity. The coastal Kannadiga is as as likely to differ in their response to policy as the interior Kannadiga who likewise, is as likely to differ as the rural Bihari. India is more like the Amazon culturally than it is like a deciduous forest.
Clearly Hindutva is a fraud - it can never deliver what its adherents think it can deliver because they themselves are deluded by a fragmentary identity that is almost useless in most aspects of daily life. The only question that remains then is - who is perpetrating this fraud and why.
—