Before The World After Gaza (2025), Pankaj Mishra wrote Blind Fanatics (2020) where he drew out the issues with upper caste and middle class liberals and intellectuals who are more concerned with their privileged positions or nationalism than about pushing against imperial interests and the subjugation of people.
Mishra argues that “liberal intelligentsia” supported the Iraq war with the “freedom, democracy, and progress” rhetoric originally wielded by European imperialists whilst they suppressed the history of “imperial conquest, brutal exploitation, and genocide” (p 4). He adds that “civilization from the West” brought “indiscriminate murder and torture,” which triggered the rise of reactionary insurgency (p 11).
Mishra argues that the far-right in Europe have repackaged their anti-Semitism to now accuse Muslims of “conspiring to control the world” (p 36). Muslims therefore are the new Jews. He states that inequality and unemployment due to hyper-globalisation have fuelled xenophobic nationalism, as perceived anxiety of becoming a minority is displaced against ethnic and religious minorities (p 40). What is conveniently forgotten is that Western Europe imported cheap labour from former colonies to make up for its depleted labour force in the aftermath of the world wars (p 35). Moreover, Mishra argues that unemployment and discrimination among second and third generation immigrants make young Muslims in Europe vulnerable to political Islam that serves as an “aphrodisiac” to “powerless individuals” (p 37).
Self-Serving Intellectuals
Mishra writes that the “iron cages of American modernity” have often been promoted by elite “foreign born academics” (p 8). He alludes to Salman Rushdie, arguing that as an “upper-class intellectual from Bombay” he does not have much in common with working class rural Muslims that were imported for Europe’s post-war economies (p 64). He adds that the Satanic Verses is less about the “immigrant condition” than about an Anglophile’s concern for his own inferior place with the white British ruling class (p 64). Mishra notes that while Rushdie puts down his detractors as prone to “mass popular irrationalism,” he ignores Hindu nationalists for killing thousands of Muslims because they had protested the ban on his book (p. 64, 67).
In 2020, Mishra wrote that the dominant attitude of most Indians on 'national unity' depends on humiliating and subjugating the Kashmiri Muslim minority
Similarly, he argues that Jordan Peterson peddles “quasi-religious opinions as empirical science” and confirms his far-right membership by never questioning the ills of profit, “slavery, genocide, and imperialism” (p 122). He adds that Peterson’s narrative on “compassion as a vice” or “toughen up, you weasel” is based on “strongman politics” from the late 19th century, when intellectual quacks preached “redemption and purification” while democracy weakened with economic and political crises (p 123). Thus, the elite have been more concerned with their own position and prejudice than the people’s concerns on institutionalised torture, indefinite detention, extrajudicial execution, and secret surveillance (p 69).
Liberal Middle Class Upper Caste Hindu Nationalism
Mishra argues that India has descended towards “Hindu supremacism and racist imperialism,” as Indian security forces have “unlimited license to massacre and rape” in Kashmir and adds that critics of such brutality are put down by “self-styled custodians of India’s liberal democracy” with “class privilege” (p 3).
This thesis continues Mishra’s arguments from previous work in various media outlets. In 2004, Mishra argued that anti-Muslim sentiments are common amongst “middle-class upper caste Hindus in both India and abroad.” He adds that “many westernized upper-caste Indians” believe that “Muslim invaders destroyed a pure and glorious Hindu civilization.” In 2020, he added that middle-class Indian nationalists scapegoat Muslims to address their own frustrations on India’s “stalled emergence as an international superpower,” as they have connected their individual identity to the “supposed ‘rise’ of India.
In 2011, Mishra argued that Kashmir has been under a “brutal colonial-style military occupation” by the “world’s largest democracy” where “700,000 Indian soldiers” inflict “extrajudicial execution, rape, and torture” including inserting “live electric wires into penises” of the Kashmiri Muslim population. He adds that Western media does not show “little children being shot in the head by Indian soldiers.” In 2017, he mentioned “mass bindings, including of children, by pellet cartridges” by Indian security forces. The parallels with Gaza are stark.
He continues that fanaticism in India and Israel is “sanctioned by their ruling classes and stoked by the media” against anyone who expresses sympathy with the victims. He adds that many upper-caste Hindus idolise Israel, as for them Israel dealt with “Muslims in the only language they understood: that of force.” Such Hindu nationalists view Muslims as the fifth column that would outbreed Hindus, even though Muslims are the “most depressed and vulnerable community in India, worse off than even low-caste Hindus” in “education, health, and employment” and are frequently exposed to “bigoted and trigger-happy policemen” and disproportionate death in “Hindu-Muslim riots.”
In 2020, Mishra argued that the dominant attitude of most Indians on “national unity” depends on “humiliating and subjugating” the Kashmiri Muslim minority. This is based on the “imperialistic desire” to possess Kashmir whose natives pose an obstacle and who therefore must be “degraded to menial status.” The parallels with the Zionist state abound. Mishra writes of liberal nationalist journalists that “ignore and erase the suffering of Kashmiris.” He adds that critics who raise concerns on “unpunished killings, rapes, and tortures” are dismissed as “undermining India’s international image” and claims that Indian liberals have “promoted a pitiless nationalism.”
Overall, Mishra draws exposes the liberal rhetoric, how it has been wielded to justify war and stoke anti-Muslim prejudice, both in Europe and India. He highlights the issues with liberal intellectuals and provides a disturbing look at Hindu nationalism, led by the middle-class, upper caste Hindus with privilege, which like its counterpart Jewish nationalism has inflicted oppression on the subjugated people.