Author Archives: notsomeritorios

Tone Deaf Brahmins masquerading as Social Justice Warriors


Recently, I wrote an article on the spectre of humiliation I faced while at JNU on the website The Ambedkarian Chronicle. My life back then was quite erratic and sensational. I have so many ideas and arguments that one life is not enough for me to write on all those ideas. I wish I had a parallel life where I was only writing.

While I was in JNU, the leftist ganglords of academia were quite irked and felt insecure from my presence in the campus.


They left no stones unturned to attack and silence me epistemically by creating an excuse that I was abusive and misogynist.

While it’s a totally different line of thought that how does one being abusive tantamount to being misogynist, if he doesn’t hate women at all.

JNU is a place where I always had to maintain my cerebral hygiene because of the dumbness of people around who instead of understanding me tried to sabotage and sideline me citing my abusive tongue.

I would like to ask, who gives them the right to decide who gets to speak and who doesn’t? Who are they to decide who gets to publish and who doesn’t?

I used to abuse left, centre and right. I still do abuse but now I do it with my scholarship. I was trying to make a point that abusive tongue is the last resource for people living in exploitative structures to express their angst and their helplessness to be able to change that structure against the will of the ruling class. Despite being students of political science and sociology and what not you don’t understand that power doesn’t reside in political parties. Power resides in the group of people who are in decision making capacities in those parties. What happens is that a small elite group of people called brahmins are in that decision making capacity in all parties left, right and centre and all other castes are just trying to negotiate and bargain with the brahmin as the leviathan. It’s an unjust social contract which needs to be re-written. It’s not settled as yet and needs to first be unsettled and then resettled. Hence I chose to abuse them all.


While Brahmins will theorise even raping other man’s woman and write a whole ass text on the ways to do that (read Kamasutra), abusive tongue for them is so problematic seems to be quite ironic to me.

I can clearly see your tactics, you leftist ganglords. In your imagination, a person like me doesn’t exist who is materially not dependent on you in any manner whatsoever.

I am not dependent on you to carry your political activism because I don’t need a hostel on campus. I have enough capital to live on rent outside the campus. I don’t need your kindness or feudal mindset which will forever make me indebted to your goodwill.

Whatever I have is solely from my own people and not a dime is from the Brahmins.

And that is your problem, you are not able to situate me into neat categories of oppressed identification because your tone deaf training only teaches you templates of oppressed beings as crooked, wretched beings who need you as their saviours. Your thought is linear whereas mine is non linear and even algebraically multivariate.


It is taught to you that when you join JNU, start fundraising for marginalised students in order to arrange laptops for them. This is how you see Us. Voila! Now you are no longer seeing Us, We are seeing You eye to eye and you are shaken to your core. Your internal contradictions of spirit are now out in the open, and I am writing it out not to beg you but to deconstruct and delegitimise your illegitimate hold over knowledge.

“Humiliation is not merely an event; it is an experience that shapes the very structure of selfhood for the oppressed.”

– Gopal Guru in Cracked Mirror

My life is a spectacle that only begins and it ends only in imagination but in reality it is never lived as if I am a ghost of sysyphus condemned to only begin and never finish.

Begining anything that is worth emancipatory for any society is no easy task and as I embark on a battle to reclaim dignity for myself and my people, it’s not so easy to decide where to begin with my story. As a young boy studying in a jesuit institution, my schooling was quite extraordinary from a large section of Indians. I was privileged to have been a part of this institution. Yet I lacked the social and cultural capital to make the best use of my school. My father, a migrant to Delhi from a nearby village was first generation into higher education and that too in Hindi and taking all the pain and hardship in his meagre income he chose to give me the best education possible, but what can be said of the sore lack of cultural and literary capital in an age where Internet was only begining to take shape in India. That was the time when he took a loan and bought for me a Intel Pentium 4  Personal Computer. During that time Wikipedia was newly launched and I was quick to explore it as a fifth grader. Once my English teacher gave my class an assignment for English elocution competition and asked us to select by our own any English poem which was then to be recited in front of the whole class. Little did I know about literature and its nuances and my curiosity of surfing on the internet, I was quite fascinated by Sir Alfred Lord Tennyson’s, The the Lady of Shallot and learnt it by heart. But I didn’t know that I will be humiliated in from of my whole class by my teacher for choosing such a poem at such a young age without knowing the nuances of literature (How, I would have know all this being the son of a migrant from Hindi speaking belt of India is beyond my comprehension).

It was only later that I would come to know about Literary theory and Literature’s role in class domination and it’s potential as a vehicle of resistance. I was taught Roland Barthes, Pierre Macherey later all by myself and with institutional help from St Xaviers College Autonomous Mumbai.

It was here that I turned my humiliation into a radical rage and wrote a poem Listen Mr Xavier’s Don based on the inspiration I sought from John Agard’s Listen Mr. Oxford Don. It was really fascinating to see my self being structured to turn my pain inside out into expressions of rage and articulation while also suffering from the melancholy of an artist’s fate since my childhood. I always had it difficult for me to make sense of this condition of my mind which made me wander a lot and I realised my fate lies in submitting myself to the study of society and its evils committed on people like me and I dedicated myself to studying Sociology but that melancholy of a wandering artists mind made me suffer more and my Intellectual gift turned into a an existential curse which I was too young to have understood. I battled it none the less and cleared Jawaharlal Nehru University ‘s Master’s Program in Sociology twice and left it midway because of reasons which were beyond my capacity to conquer.

Later I realised my calling is sociology and it not only helps me become a better person, it eases my existential pain stemming out from my Intellectual curiosity as a person of an oppressed identity. As the Society and State chose to ‘Discipline’ and ‘Punish’ me in a Foucauldian sense.

I was first selected in CSSS MA Sociology in 2020 CoVID year and being at home without any laptop made my life worse. At that time I didn’t even have a separate room to attend my classes without distractions especially when in a pandemic everyone is forced to be at home. That was a tough time and I battled through it but my existential curse didn’t let me finish it. At the same time I was also awarded an admission in MA Social Anthropology at SOAS but without any funding. My deepest desires to engage with Sociology through global exposure was shattered. After that I spent my time wandering again aimlessly as if nothing has come out of my efforts. Then with debilitating energy I once again applied to JNU CSSS in 2023 and I tried once again to ease my existential pain but all I got in return from the campus was ridicule, isolation and boycott. At that time around I was also writing on my blog notsomeritorios.co.in and my writing invited lot of backlash especially from the left intellegentsia of the campus. I was always a target because I was working all alone that is to say I was not part of any political party working in the campus. And this was a statement I was making because I had seen very closely all these parties and they had nothing meaningful to offer for a person like me who believes in the praxis of Epistemic warfare. Post Spivak incident My personal troubles only accentuated I fell to my addiction which made things worse for me. One important reason behind my aggression and abusive tongue, I can’t share publically because of various reasons led me into decay and I missed my exams due to the strange state of mind I was in. So much for the mental health support talks and charade at campus. Despite everyone knowing me in the campus no one ever reached out to me while I was being attacked by the ganglords of leftist academia. From being called misogynist to Islamophobic no one let me defend my case. My agency to define myself was robbed off me and I was epistemically silenced while many people in academia used me to further their career writing articles and papers in journals, no one reached out to me and I was left all alone to be fend off by my family. Even my class (CSSS 2023-25) was against me because I was critical of the agency Feminism uses to demonize the lower castes and emasculates them both academically and psychologically.

One of my classmate, SFI CC member even exhorted everyone to file complaint against me and that she will help them in any manner possible to hunt me down. This was what the Left is saying right now about ABVP, isolate, boycott and defeat in plain action.

Even BAPSA never came in full support of me publically and when I inquired they were like since you were not a member of BAPSA we won’t support you. This is what BAPSA’s politics has become. Let me be very straight that this same BAPSA would have made career out of me had I committed suicide.

What can be said about DSF, whose president attenda Coldplay’s concert worth 20,000 rupees of tickets and then demands donations from the JNU populace in the name of political activism against BJP.

In short, I am socially boycotted in JNU campus for a long time and the mental toll it takes me is beyond my capacity to process it and I am having a tough time.

Anshul Kumar
MA Sociology CSSS

A Sociological Analysis of the Idea behind Sub Classification of the Scheduled Caste List

“The fact is that the governing class in India blinded by self-interest is unmindful of the absurdity of the argument of naked efficiency and being conscious that it has the power to convert its opinion into law does not bother what the servile classes have to say on the point. The governing class does not bother to inquire into the ways and means by which it has acquired its supremacy. It does not feel the necessity of doing so, partly because it believes that it acquired its supremacy by dint of merit and partly because it believes that no matter how it acquired its power it is enough that it is in a position to dictate its policy on the servile classes.”

Dr BR Ambedkar in Mr Gandhi and the emancipation of the Untouchables

Even before the culmination of Indian state into a Constitutional Republic, Dr. Ambedkar held quite insightful and prophetic opinions on the ruling class of India, primarily Brahmins. He used the term governing class and intellectual class interchangeably to refer to the ruling class of Indian subcontinent.

His fundamental critique of this governing class was that this class of men consider themselves the sole guardians of the entire population of this nation including the serville classes. This class doesn’t want to question its own hegemony over the law, policies and institutions that it holds but is always eager to define what is best for the serville classes without even considering their opinion.

This ruling class is strategically non reflexive and uses it’s intellectual armoury to legitimise the deplorable and damned condition of the servile classes, the Untouchables along with other backward classes.

If one traces the history of Indian nation state, the idea of reservation was put to judicial scrutiny the very moment after its constitutional mandate after which the parliament was forced to amend the constitution to keep it safeguarded and under constitutional status. I am talking about the Champakkam Dorrairajan vs GOI case of 1951 in the Supreme Court of India.

Even though the Constitution of India, a document of Modernity has clearly paved the way for the emancipation of the Untouchables, it’s radical potential was always sabotaged by the Indian ruling class which never accepted it in toto.

One of the reasons that the ruling class of India Today panders to the BJP RSS led vision of India is the aversion of the BJP RSS to the constitution of India which it wants to ‘Decolonise’. ‘Decolonisation’ in Indian context is a slippery slope which is almost an euphemism for radical Hinduisation of the Indian Constitution, which the Hindu right thinks is largely a Western Document ill suited to the needs of the Republic of Bharat, as they like to call it nowadays.

Even in sociological literature little is mentioned or studied about the ruling class as a social group with collective class interest. On the other hand, for most of the Sociological literature, the subject of study is always the ruled class.

French Sociolgist Couple Monique Pinçon-Charlot and Michel Pinçon were pioneers in studying the bourgeoise, the elites, the ruling class of the French society. Most of their work is published in French with little to nothing available in English.

In an interview they gave to Mikael Palme and Bertrand Réau, they said, “the value of our work is that it shows that the dominant class is heterogeneous, but that despite that heterogeneity, it shows solidarity in defending its class interests. There are huge disparities in economic wealth within that class. If you take the list of the 500 biggest professional fortunes in France, you can see that Bernard Arnault, who has been number one for several years, has 400 times the amount of the person ranked 500. There are no disparities to such an extent in other social classes.”

Their extensive work on the culture of economic elite or the ruling class clearly points out that despite having more economic disparity or inequality among themselves than that exists among the working classes the super rich rarely have any class conflict.

On the other hand, working class with much more economic equality as compared to the ruling elite display more class infractions and conflicts which is absent among the ruling class.

This is not just accidental but strategic as Pincon-Charlot and Pincon further argue, “ the basis of membership in the dominant class under the capitalist system is holding the titles of ownership that enable the exploitation of others’ labour. Thus, membership in this class rests on the radical and arbitrary antagonism of class relations. And all of its members are mobilized to defend the capitalist system in its current neo-liberal phase.”

What it implies is that despite their being major economic inequality among the ruling class as a social group, the ruling class never allows for any infractions among it. On the other hand it employs and uses any infractions among the servile or the working class as an excuse to break the class solidarity among them simply because it has the capacity to rule in the realms of law, policy making and as an agent of intellectual heritage that is legitimised through years of reservation.

This is the Idea behind the Sub-Classification Of the Scheduled Caste List.

The ‘Brahmin’ Left Steering Working Class towards the ‘Capitalist’ Right

Ever since the rise of far-right governments throughout the First world and third world as well, leading social scientists were grappling with methodological inquiry to understand what has led to this shift of the working classes from an avowal of left socialist parties to right capitalist ones.

What is it that has led the populism of the right appeal to the working class? No one seemed to have a convincing answer and almost all liberal left intelligentsia were busy in studying and observing the behaviour of the working-class populations worldwide. It was not just limited to studying and observing, the niche working class populations were labelled and berated as racist, xenophobic, anti LGBT etc. as if all these attributes were a particular and specific trait of the working class.

The focus of all academic inquiry was the working-class people, and even the blame was shifted on to them for electing far right demagogues; to shrug the responsibility from their shoulders, the academic world found an easy scapegoat – blame the masses for their own demise.

This is what is called intellectual dishonesty. Recently, Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak, on her being awarded the Holberg Prize (popular as the Nobel prize of Social Sciences and Humanities), in an interview to Times Higher Education said that she wants to see, “If it’s possible to insert the intuitions of democracy in the children of the very poor, without talking about democracy.” (Times Higher Education, n.d.)

This statement of hers is paradigmatic and symbolic of what the ‘Brahmin Left’ stands for, a sense of virtue signalling where in you being a part of the ruling class have adopted all the progressive and liberal ideas, and it is the poor, the working class, who need to be taught these ideas like democratism, fraternity and equality.

Catherine Liu, a Professor of Film and Media Studies at University of California- Irvine, in her book ‘Virtue Hoarders- The Case against the Professional Managerial Class’ writes, “Liberal members of the credentialed classes love to use the word empower, when they talk about ‘people’, but the use of that verb objectifies the recipients of their help while implying that the people have no access to power without them.”

This credentialed class is what Liu calls the ‘Professional Managerial Class’ and what French Economist Thomas Piketty has referred to as ‘The Brahmin Left’. (Thomas Piketty, 2022 Vol. 137 Issue 1)

It should be noted here, that the word Brahmin is used as a noun notifying the section of upper middle professional University educated class who work in tandem with the capitalist ruling class, acting as a mediator between the working class and the capitalist ruling class. It should not be confused with the archaic meaning of the word Brahmin, which stands for the priestly caste in Indian society, the Brahmin(s), although the origin is loosely based on the notions of Brahmin being the intellectual class of India.

This class can also be called the ‘Brokering Class’, as it acts as a broker between the working class and the ruling capitalist class, to secure its own material interests.

The ‘Brahmin Left’ is the one which is leading the liberal ideas in University Campuses. It is the decisive force on what gets to be researched and published in mainstream academia, which accelerates and accentuate public discourse and opinion.

The ‘Brahmin Left’ has co-opted all the movements based on ‘identity’, be it based on Caste, Gender, Sexuality, etc. or any other identity which portrays a marginalised self.

The idea again is to ‘empower’ and ‘teach’ the working class, demeanour, and mannerisms of being virtue laden, without offering them any material security. In short, the Brahmin Left has weaponised identity Politics against the very identities, it seeks to ‘empower’.

It is now easier to get published or accepted in their discourse if you are performative enough, even though that performance might not lead to material betterment of the larger sections of these ‘marginalised identities’ it offers certain individuals’ easy access to their own coteries and make them part of itself (read the brahmin Left).

Everything now becomes an act of performing virtues e.g. A Buzzfeed video on ‘A list of Caste Slurs that you might be using, but should not use because they are casteist ‘.

How does this help these castes against which these slurs are used economically is never considered, but it for sure absolves the people of ‘Brahmin Left’ of any guilt or participation in the oppression of these very castes.

It is not only imagined but performed that by not using caste-slurs, the ‘Brahmin Left’ is doing a favor, and is doing its part in securing the rights of these very castes.

No one has researched whether this leads to further normalisation of these slurs, but it for sure happens that certain individuals get to have a career among the university and public policy led NGO Interventionist human rights spaces.

A large section of Dalits and OBC’s studying in university campuses are part of this ‘Brahmin Left’ and they are alienated from the very demands of the working class.

What they want to talk about is intersectionality (which was meant to be a legal terminology and not a metric of measuring ‘Oppression’) and gender pronouns, while offering little to nothing for the everyday problems of the larger population of Dalits and OBCs and other marginalized identities.

The Brahmin Left not only alienates itself from lived material realities of the working class, but also alienates and steers away the working class from intellectual thought and towards the right.

This habit of virtue laden signalling of the Brahmin Left creates among the working class a deep dislike and discontentment towards the university and intellectuals, and pushes them away to the populist and seemingly relatable demagogues on the right.

References

Thomas Piketty, A. G.-T. (2022 Vol. 137 Issue 1). Brahmin Left Versus Merchant Right:Changing Political Cleavages in 21 Western Democracies, 1948-2020. The Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Times Higher Education. (n.d.). Retrieved from Times Higher Education: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/gayatri-spivak-im-not-teaching-get-students-income

The Capitalist Capture of the Anti Caste Internet

Ever  since the Arab spring erupted in Egypt and its  neighbouring countries, the victory of democracy was touted as possible only because of the internet revolution, which at that time was the role of twitter in acting as an alternative form of Media, which had little or no control of the dictatorial regimes in the Middle East.

The message it sent across was that newage social media is the solution to the social injustice prevalent in non-western societies.

At that time, even Facebook shifted from a photo-sharing website to a powerhouse of debates and discussions, which promised an escape from the mainstream media

Slowly advertising and marketing took hold of these social media giants and the  promise of offering a voice to the voiceless turned into a ruthless

‘market-pace of ideas’, where the more u can advertise and  sell yourself, the more is  the worth of your opinion. There was no place left for organic thoughts, but just a capitalistic battle of advertising and marketing

These social media giants started becoming monopolistic  and captured the attention of the people to advertise incessantly.

The bait that was set, to sell democratic platforms to give voice to social justice, was successful and, the well meaning pursuit of social  justice rolled backwards into a somersault , into a highly capitalistic notion of selling your own self  creating a brand out of your own selves. This idea of selling your own self pitted  every individual against each other into the realm governed by market ideology, the more you can advertise, the more is your revenue, the more your revenue, more the worth of the opinion you have, which you can use as a means for propaganda to your own niche audiences These social media platforms turned into large-scale advertising monopolies, which now dictate and even fraudulently influence their users for or against anything, totally based on the fact, that whatever generates more advertisement will generate more revenue, so they started selling themselves to whoever could be the highest bidder, be it Donald Trump in USA or Narendra Modi and the BJP in India. It was now all about advertising and generating revenue, and further use it to indoctrinate social media users for or against a certain ideology. Again, there was no place left for meaningful discourse, and what mattered was, how much money you can create, which you can use to further increase advertising revenue, And in doing so,  you stuck to pay allegiance to anyone who can pour in or provide you enough capital

This was pretty much similar to the 1970’s  Pepsi’s advertising commercials, which promised  anti-racist gestures and a commitment to the civil rights movement, to brand itself against coca cola’s market share.

This is what has happened with the Anti-Caste world too. The hollow promise of fighting for social justice  against caste has been captured by the market forces. It doesn’t matter, what your niche market reach is, it could be  mushrooming of new age anti-caste you tube channels, blog websites or for that matter instagram influencers who promise you a commitment to the cause of social justice.

The idea was never about a well meaning policy, but more about capturing the attention of its niche users and sustaining within the advertising model of technofeudalist giants like Meta (Facebook).

There came websites run by NGOs powered by academic cheerleaders run by academics who sought a new place in the highly saturated social science academic world, which often talked about and showcased atrocities against Dalits, Muslims or other marginalized identities.

There came instagram influencers, who promised a commitment to their community.

There came YouTube channels which specifically catered to atrocities against Dalits and discourse centred there upon and created their user base, just so to earn revenue from the advertising model of these techno feudalist MNCs.

The more you can sell your ideas aggressively through  advertising the more you can create a place amongst your niche audience.

Although, it is the anti caste realm, I am referring to here, this is not limited to this world. This is just a limited fraction of the entire marketplace of ideas, which has something to everything for someone to everyone belonging to any social identity or ideological location.

In short, the well meaning discourse of social justice saw a gradual death and re-incarnated itself as a model based on market preferences governed by algorithms generated and pushed by techno feudalist giants.

The process of self otherisation’ : An act of Ontological Violence

In most of the Anthropological literature, self-otherisation is defined as a process through which marginalized identities, under the structural influence of dominant social norms, self marginalise themselves by acquiescing to the dominant narratives Thus, their self that gets formed further Otherises them from ruling communities.

This process of Self otherisation is often detrimental to the marginalized self, as it furthers the systemic oppression they face, without them being acutely aware  of it being happening.

In Marxist Literature, this has been called false consciousness, which hinders the coming together of the working class.

Existing literature in social sciences focuses heavily on the dynamics of the marginalised self otherising themselves under the influence of ruling social narratives.

eg.

Frantz Fanon in ‘Black Skin, White Masks’ examines how colonised individuals internalise the coloniser’s perspective, leading to self Otherisation through internalised racism and alienation.

Ghassan Hage in ‘Alter- Politics: Critical Anthropology and the Radical Imagination argues how marginalised groups sometimes reinforce their own otherness to navigate dominant cultural norms.

Sherry Ortner in ‘Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power and the Acting Subject argues how people internalise social structures, sometimes perpetuating their own subordination

or, on a different note, Charles Taylor argues in ‘The Ethics of Authenticity’, that modern forms of oppression can lead to marginalised selves further otherising themselves against their oppressors.

What I would like to argue is that in all these existing literature on self Otherisation, it is the oppressed self which is self otherising itself either to navigate and get influenced in the dominant narratives or to resist and attack the dominant narratives.

Here in,  my attempt is to shift the anthropological gaze from the oppressed to the oppressor, and as a testimony to my argument at hand, I would like to focus on the Anthropological dichotomy between the Brahmins and Untouchables.

In shifting, the anthropological gaze, from the oppressed to the oppressor, I would like to re define the process of ‘Self Otherisation’- as “ A process of Self racialising, one’s own social group in order to seek hegemony and dominance over an alien outgroup, to further colonise, define and categorise the out group based on its own definition of its own self, as an other to the other.”

This my attempt is an anthropological scrutiny of the process of Self Otherisation, the Brahmins undertook in history, and which they still do through their religion, to seek dominance and virtual monopoly over the intelligentsia, so that oppression becomes an everyday reality, difficult to be outdone.

“Theirs has been a test of grit, courage and the boundless human spirit. Sunita Williams and the #Crew9 astronauts have once again shown us what perseverance truly means. Their unwavering determination in the face of the vast unknown will forever inspire millions. “

https://x.com/narendramodi/status/1902235311071023195?t=5-lwRl8EObR_d-vippQ7Ew&s=19

What a low humanity has stooped down to, that it needs a travel to Space and being stuck there to realise “true” perseverance, when there are millions living on”Earth”, struggling to persevere!

डरना नहीं है भाइयों और बहनों क्योंकि अति से आप पहले भी गुजरे हो!

ज्यादा से ज्यादा क्या होगा हुक्का पानी बंद? गले में हांडी, पीठ में झाड़ू या सामाजिक बहिष्कार? कुछ भी नया नहीं है तो डर नया क्यों हो?

इससे बदतर कुछ नहीं होगा, चैन की सांस लो और डटे रहो!

What do you think Anshul Kumar would think of Spivak being awarded Holberg Prize ?

It’s difficult to say with certainty what Anshul Kumar’s exact opinion would be about Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak receiving the 2025 Holberg Prize, as it would depend on his personal reflections and evolving perspective since their public altercation in May 2024 at JNU. However, based on his previous statements and actions—particularly his critique of Spivak during and after that incident—we can make an educated guess about how he might react.

Kumar, a Dalit sociology student at JNU, has expressed significant frustration with Spivak, not just over the pronunciation dispute (where she corrected his pronunciation of W.E.B. Du Bois’ name), but more broadly over what he perceives as her privileged position and the way she engages with subaltern voices. His question at the seminar challenged Spivak’s claim to a middle-class identity, pointing to her elite background (e.g., her familial ties to Bihari Lal Bhaduri, a notable figure in Bengal’s intellectual history). After the event, Kumar’s social media posts and interviews revealed a deeper critique: he accused Spivak of embodying a “circle of sycophancy” in academia, where established scholars like her are placed on pedestals and shielded from genuine critique, particularly from marginalized voices like his own. He also argued that her focus on his pronunciation was a way to sidestep his substantive question, reinforcing power imbalances rather than dismantling them—ironic, given her seminal work “Can the Subaltern Speak?”

Given this context, Kumar might view Spivak’s Holberg Prize win with skepticism or even disdain. The Holberg Prize, awarded for her “groundbreaking interdisciplinary research in comparative literature, translation, postcolonial studies, political philosophy, and feminist theory,” elevates her status further within the global academic elite. Kumar could see this as another instance of the academic establishment rewarding someone he believes speaks about the subaltern rather than truly amplifying their voices. His critique of Spivak’s scholarship—such as her framing of Sati in “Can the Subaltern Speak?” as a case of “White men saving Brown women from Brown men,” which he contrasted with Ambedkar’s view of it as an upper-caste tool to enforce endogamy—suggests he might question whether her work genuinely serves the marginalized or simply polishes her own intellectual reputation.

On the other hand, Kumar’s reaction might not be entirely negative. He has acknowledged attending Spivak’s seminar out of interest in engaging with scholars he disagrees with, indicating a willingness to grapple with their ideas. He might recognize the significance of an Indian scholar receiving such a prestigious international award, especially one who has worked on postcolonial and subaltern issues, even if he disputes her approach. However, this recognition would likely be tempered by his belief that awards like the Holberg reinforce hierarchical structures he rejects—structures where, as he put it, “scholars are brought in to be placed on the pedestal of a godman or godwoman” and dissent is stifled.

In short, Anshul Kumar would likely have a complex reaction. He might criticize the award as further proof of Spivak’s entrenchment in an elitist academic system that he feels silences subaltern challenges—like his own at JNU—while grudgingly noting her influence. His exact thoughts would depend on how much he’s reflected on the incident since 2024 and whether he sees this accolade as validating her authority over marginalized voices or as a broader commentary on postcolonial scholarship’s place in the world. Without a direct statement from him post-award (as of March 17, 2025), this remains a reasoned speculation based on his prior stance.

A Civilization which can’t prevent rape, It should be imagined, It has been raped by an alien 👽 Civilisation!

And thus guess what? You guessed it right ? Didn’t you?

All their progenies are? Hehe!