Fear pushes us to know the social and political determinations of refugees from a right-wing perspective ('are they potential ISIS militants?'). But compassion works by blinding us to it.
This is a concept that operates not by concealing the actual conditions, but by creating its own 'reality': the reality of communalism as a deviation from secularism and the constitution.
A secular right-wing and a growth-friendly communalism will be the new name for Hindutva's sectarian extremism.
Unfortunately Niall Ferguson has managed to distract Pankaj Mishra from the main theatre of empire-building today which is more than just western superiority or domination. Both reify ‘western domination’, crediting it with an unmerited force and power.
The black youth, together with the ‘feral scum’ of other colours, has always been stopped and searched, detained. But what happens when he/she stops and searches detains the city?
Maybe saving the lives of civilians by taking away their fundamental political agency is the real problem with UN-NATO interventions, rather than some hidden economic self-interest.
The Arab world has spoken truth to power in ways that question the celebration of western style democracies and the ‘end of history’ marked by the ‘1989 velvet revolutions’.
This is a question that may be as interesting for people in Egypt as it is for those in India. The answer also has some implications for activists in the much-vaunted western democracies
It is the deeper process of social transformation which should spread from one country to the other and not just some hollowed out ‘pro-democracy movement’.
