Faces of Supremacy

In 1969, Norma McCorvey got pregnant with a third child. Unfortunately for her, she lived in Texas which considered abortion illegal. Her case went up to the Supreme Court.

In order to preserve her privacy, a pseudonym Jane Roe was used in court documents and the state of Texas was defended by District Attorney Henry Wade. This case, which Norma won by a 7-2 majority in the Supreme Court, granted her the right to privacy under the Fourteenth Amendment. The case went down in history as ‘Roe V Wade’ and ushered in the birth of the ‘right to abortion’ in the US.?

A few weeks ago, the Supreme Court overturned this ruling and granted states their own right to determine how they wished to handle the issue of abortion. The media projects this as a case of bodily control over women. While that may be, it has its roots in theocracy and white supremacy. You see, Norma was a white woman. Women deciding, whether to have children or not, is a problem. The problem is the growth of the white race. If women start to determine whether they want another child or not they may curtail the growth of the white race and the other races will overrun the country.?

As if to prove the point,

Elon Musk had another pair of twins through a surrogate mother bringing his child count to a grand total of 9. The human population has gone from a little over 1 Billion in 1900 to 8 Billion today, what depopulation is he talking about?

Unless, of course, he is talking about the racist bigot population. Those numbers have been coming down.

In the US, the Supreme Court is the interpreter of the Constitution. A document that was written more than 200 years ago. The founding fathers of the USA were slave-owning bourgeois who no longer wished to pay taxes. In the words of Donald Trump, smart Noblemen. If you wish to be true to them, you would probably have to do a lot of bad things by today’s standards.?

Coming to India.?

The partition of India was the result of two English-bred bourgeois who could not agree on who would be the first prime minister of the country. Jawaharlal Nehru and Mohammed Ali Jinnah settled that dispute by dividing the nation. Jinnah did not have any grounds for asking for the division and hence created a state that was constitutionally Islamic. His claim was that India was not safe for Muslims and they would not be properly represented.

This created a schism. A group of Hindus in India asked, well if it is so hard for Muslims to live in India, then how come they continue to live here even after the partition? The fact that Pakistan was constitutionally Islamic while India chose to be secular really grated at them.?

This gave India its very own version of supremacy under the banner of Hindutva. Hindutva believed in the primacy of the Hindus. Over the past 7 years, they have grown a paper-thin skin when it comes to anything said about their religion.

According to the section 295A of the Indian Penal Code

295A. Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings or any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs.— Whoever, with deliberate and malicious intention of outraging the religious feelings of any class of citizens of India, by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or otherwise, insults or attempts to insult the religion or the religious beliefs of that class, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both.

Source: The Centre for Internet Society

The trouble with such laws is that when you decide to weaponise them, you can do it to any extent.?

Normally, it is very hard to prove intent in court. You may say something, but did you really do it with the intention of hurting someone or was it just said in the heat of the moment? It would be near impossible unless there is an admission of intent.?

You need to prove intent, only if you are planning on seeking justice.

Most often these laws are used to incarcerate those whose views are not compatible with that of the government. Hence, anything that anybody says which may be meant in jest or for any other reason can be interpreted as malicious. The idea is not to prove the charge, the idea is to send them to prison. To harass, intimidate and scare. After having been shunted around prisons for 6-months, their spirit is broken.

A month ago, a member of the ruling party in India said things about the Prophet Mohammed on an Indian news channel. It would have been par for the course in India except, a bunch of Middle Eastern countries decided to protest it.

India is trying to contain the diplomatic fallout as?outrage ?grows in the Muslim world following?derogatory comments ?made by ruling party officials about the Prophet Mohammed.

The United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Oman, and Iraq are among?at least 15?Muslim-majority nations to have condemned the remarks, which were described as "Islamophobic," with several countries summoning India's ambassadors.

Source: CNN

The diplomatic fallout was incredible.?Even worse the Prime Minister was on a state visit to the UAE when this happened.

While several countries were outraged, she was never imprisoned. On the contrary, she was provided with increased security. On the other hand, the founder of Alt-News, which has been picking apart the lies of the current government, was sent to prison for a tweet from 2018, which offended someone 4 years later. A tweet which was merely a screenshot from a movie from the 1980s.?

This is what supremacy looks like.?

Finally, someone is standing up to it.

The San Francisco-based microblogging website approached the Karnataka high court on Tuesday (July 5) to overturn orders issued by the Indian authorities to remove content from its platform,?Reuters reported . Twitter worries blocking political content posted by official handles of political parties amounts to a violation of freedom of speech, among other things.

In a tweet hours after Twitter’s legal move, junior IT minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar said, without naming names, that foreign firms can approach the courts, but they are not exempt from local laws.

Source: Quartz

It takes a private organisation to stand up to the demands of the government and question the legal validity of those demands in light of the freedom of speech that the constitution of India grants. Let me tell you Twitter does not need Musk to show up to uphold freedoms.?

“Through a voluntary mechanism, Twitter sporadically uploads the specific web addresses included in blocking orders to the Lumen Database, a project that houses legal complaints and requests for the removal of content,”?explains Apar Gupta , executive director, Internet Freedom Foundation.

It’s how Indians know that?journalists, politicians , and?activists ?are being silenced; that tweets around farmers’ protests and?covid-19 mismanagement ?were being withheld; and that their country is the?largest source ?of government requests for information on the microblogging site.

“From a citizens’ rights perspective, however, the need to rely on a voluntary mechanism is a cause for concern,” Gupta said. “It is also unsustainable as it may eventually come under threat.”

Moreover, just because companies drag the government to court, it doesn’t mean there will be a resolution. In 2021, when WhatsApp?sued the government ?over new laws that would force the messaging app to break privacy protection, the government claimed the right to privacy is not absolute but “subject to reasonable restrictions.”

Source: Quartz

Supremacy works by drowning out the voices of those who speak against power. It does not look the same everywhere and does not even proliferate in the same way.

The trouble with supremacy is also that it needs someone to exercise its power on. What if they got what they wanted? I can tell you from an Indian context.

Say, India was a Hindu state and there were no more people from any other religion in the nation. What would you suppose would happen?

The Brahminical movement would start. The upper caste would want to exercise power over the lower caste. There would be those who would come in to exploit that division. Let us suppose we got rid of all of the lower castes and there were only upper caste people left. The Shivites (those who worship Shiva) and Vaishnavites (those who worship Vishnu) would start bickering over who is superior.?

Look at Sri Lanka. They fought the Tamils for decades. They finally managed to kill Prabhakaran and decimate the LTTE. Now they are all fighting amongst themselves.

This is just never-ending. It will never be enough. In order for one to be supreme, they need another to be inferior. That quest never ends.?

The only end is to crush supremacy altogether.?