How Martha Nussbaum helped Narendra Modi

The prominent American philosopher, Martha Nussbaum, along with Amartya Sen, has done much to promote the Rights Based approach to Development. More recently, her focus has shifted to the role of 'Public Emotions' in improving outcomes.
 Rahul Gandhi, the best educated member of his dynasty, appears to be deeply invested in this approach.

 His pitch for the 2014 elections was as follows- 'Mummy has already passed Laws like Right to Education, Information, Food etc. Furthermore, we have taken power away from the Ministers and M.Ps and MLAs and vested it in local communities directly answerable to local people. So Effective Capabilities for even the most vulnerable sections of Society already exist. It is literally the case that the poor woman starving in her little hut already has all the Rights and Capabilities she requires so as to 'become the change she wants to see in the world'.  In other words, the job of the Prime Minister is merely ceremonial. If anyone comes to him and says 'I need help' all the P.M can do is reply 'you already have the power and the legal right to get relief. Why are you bothering me? My only possible role is that of displaying some appropriate Public Emotion. Nothing more.'

From the philosophical point of view, this may be all very well and good. But, it gave rise to a bizarre situation where, in 2014, there was only one candidate for the P.M's job who said 'I want the job.I can do it well. What's more, if you have any problem, just drop me a line and I'll sort things out'.
Surely, that's what needs to hear from an applicant for the country's top job?

By contrast, Rahul wasn't just saying he didn't want the job- that could be taken as humility- he was saying that the job wasn't worth having because his Mummy had already waved a magic wand and vested Power in the People- indeed, poor Women living in little huts were already effecting some great revolution and doing amazing things and the C.E.O's of big companies ought to go and learn Management skills from them if they hoped to survive in the new Utopia.

This begs the question, if Rahul didn't want to be P.M- if the job wasn't worth having- what was he campaigning for? The answer, once again, involves  Nussbaum/Sen type philosophy which seeks to put Value Judgments back at the center of Social Choice. Thus, Nussbaum tells us, Modi's speeches, at one time, pandered to feelings of fear and shame. That's bad. So Modi is a bad man. Bad men should lose elections because Democracy is actually nice and shouldn't let nasty men pander to fear and shame coz Martha reckons that's like totally not cool, dude.
Talking ignorant ultracrepidarian nonsense, however, is a good thing because that's what Philosophy is about.
But, is Rahul actually a philosopher?
After all, Rahul ought to have realized that since poor women living in little huts had already been empowered, the onus of defeating Modi fell upon them. No doubt he had a duty to display some 'Public Emotion' from time to time but surely he could do that simply by altering the length of his beard stubble? What more could possibly be required of him? Indeed, even pointing out that poor women living in little huts now have all the power is unnecessary. People could find out this fact for themselves through Right to Information. Thus, had Rahul been consistent in his Philosophy, he shouldn't have gone negative on Modi because if Modi really was a bad man the safest place for him to be bad would be as P.M. because that office now has no power. Suppose it does have some power, then Rahul needed to present himself as a serious rival for the job Modi was angling for. The fact that he didn't bother to do so proves this to be the case.  The fact that Rahul did go negative shows either that he was inconsistent or else had embraced Nussbaum's Public Emotion theory along with Rights based shite. So he was saying 'boo to Modi' not so as to prevent him from becoming PM- which might have forced Rahul himself to take that worthless office- but just coz saying 'boo to Modi' is what Rights based Philosophers- like Nussbaum- do for 'time pass'.

In this way Martha's well publicized displays of Public Emotion with respect to Modi, have ended up helping him to an unprecedented landslide victory. But only because Rahul Baba is so well educated. Had he been stupid, Congress might well have muddled through.

Nussbaum, Narendra Modi and tolmema

Martha Nussabum has called Modi's election victory a black mark against Gujarat. What does black mark mean? Well, black is the color of niggers and other such filth and the voters of Gujarat by ignoring Nussbaum's views (remember Nussbaum is WASP and blonde, only having converted to Judaism after marriage) have rejected the option to Whiten themselves. Instead they have been dirtied and defiled by a black mark.
Nussbaum herself knows how to whiten things- by using tipp-ex to cover over the truth. What happened was this. Nussbaum had previously testified in an American court that the word 'tolmema' used by Plato to castigate homosexuality carried no pejorative meaning. When taken to task for this obvious lie, she obfuscated the issue by claiming that she personally used an out of date lexicon, that of Liddell & Scott from 1897, rather than the one corrected and updated by Jones. This wasn't true. When she verified her source and found she'd been caught in a lie, she simply tipp-exed out 'Jones' from the affidavit she submitted to prove she hadn't perjured herself.

'In a sworn affidavit dated October 21, Nussbaum stated that her own interpretation of tolmêma, , was borne out by "the authoritative dictionary relied on by all scholars in this area." She then proceeded to give the dictionary entry, which indeed lists no pejorative connotation of the word. But what "authoritative dictionary" did she have in mind? The answer to that question would soon land her in trouble. Nussbaum's affidavit is organized as a series of numbered paragraphs. In paragraph 10, the name of the lexicon in question appears this way:

Liddell, Scott          Lexicon of the Ancient Greek Language.

The possible significance of the blank space--a blob of liquid paper on the original document--leaped out at her opponents, Finnis and George. For the authoritative dictionary that is actually relied on by all Greek scholars is, in fact, customarily listed as "Liddell, Scott & Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon." Without the "& Jones," "Liddell and Scott" necessarily refers to an 1897 edition of this basic lexicographical reference tool--a long-superseded edition that in fact lists no pejorative meaning for the word tolmêma. The Jones edition, on the other hand, published in 1940, includes extensive revisions made under the direction of the scholar Henry Stuart Jones. Among the revisions, as both Finnis and George are quick to point out, is the inclusion of "shameless act" as a possible translation of tolmêma.'

In other words, if not a shuffler and a liar and a fuckwit of Amartya Sen like proportions, it is clear that Nussbaum has little acquaintance with ordinary standards of honesty and truth telling let alone any higher notion of Alethia.

In the case of Narendra Modi- who, within a year of taking office as Chief Minister, put an end to the cycle of politically instrumentalized communal rioting in Gujarat which began in 1969 and was rewarded at the polls for it- Nussbaum simply ignores the facts and wishes the Gujarati voters too had tipp-exed over the them. Not to do so is indeed to earn a 'black mark' in her book. Yet, most Gujaratis can't read her book. What they can do is vote according to their empirical knowledge and political convictions. If the Gujaratis wanted to go in for ethnic cleansing, no force on earth could stop them. They don't want that. They don't like riots. They don't like rape and arson and murderous mobs. There was a Congress Minister of Fisheries back in the 90's who engineered a terrorist attack in Surat so as to set off a round of communal rioting with the bombs being supplied by a prominent gangster with ties to a Karachi based Crime Lord. This gangster then killed an M.P who had blown the whistle on his activities. All three were Muslims. The gangster fled across the border because the killing of the M.P had angered the Union Home Minister. But he fell out with his Godfather there and returned to India. The Police, who had been in his pocket, bumped him off so as to prevent his testifying against them. Such was the rule of the 'Secular' Congress Party in Gujarat. It never cleaned up its act. It specialized in fielding tainted candidates- including Hindus involved in the post-Godhra riots. Congress wasn't interested in Development. That's why it got the boot. Modi had only been in office a few months when the Godhra outrage occurred. This was a couple of months after the attack on the Indian Parliament when India and Pakistan were close to war. Delhi suspected that Godhra had been orchestrated by the ISI so as to set off a chain of pogroms with the intention of paralyzing the transport network in the State by clogging it up with displaced people, thus hampering Indian troop movements. For this reason Modi and Defence Minister Fernandes had to take a strong line from the outset. This should have been enough to destroy Modi's future in the State but something unexpected happened. By lifting curfew early and emphasizing the need to get back to business as usual, Modi sent a signal which the Gujarati entrepreneurial class welcomed. The alacrity with which he got on top of the Akshardam revenge attack- coolly putting all the blame on the Pakistanis- was the final straw which broke the back of politically instrumentalised Communal rioting.
Gujarati's are to be complimented, not condemned, for finding a way to marginalize the lumpen, criminalized, political class and get rid of the periodic riots which empowered those bottom feeders.
I'm not saying Modi completely broke the nexus between the Police and land-sharks and bootleggers and so on. But he showed a way forward and the voters of his state rewarded him for it.
Nussbaum says that the Gujarati's should pay greater heed to the outcome of recent Court trials rather than rely on their own memories and common sense. This is quite foolish. Gujaratis knew how things were done but didn't want things to go on being done in that way. They voted for the man who brought about the change they desired.
Nussbaum learnt nothing from her tolmema debacle. She uses her tipp-ex on inconvenient facts and awards black marks to brown people.
Proof, as if more proof was needed, that Professors who talk Ethics are all worthless scumbags.

Martha Nussbaum- magnifying India's problems.

This is a hilarious interview with Prof. Nussbaum which ends like this-
JOANNE MYERS: Thank you so much for magnifying all the problems of India.

Says it all really.