Periyar, the original “hero” who fumed and fulminated against “Brahmanical Tyranny,” must be laughing and dancing in his grave. He has acquired a new modern supporter and ally, Pete Navarro, the trade advisor to the Tariff King, the US President Donald Trump. In the performative circus that is the present-day White House, Navarro first accused India of being a laundromat for the Kremlin.
No one really cared about this accusation, except for the warriors on social media. But then Navarro grandly declared in a TV interview that the Russia-Ukraine conflict is “Modi’s War.” This garnered amused chuckles in Washington and New Delhi. Infuriated by Modi’s continued “intransigence” and refusal to bend the knee, Navarro desperately waded into Indian caste politics.
Solemnly, like a court jester, Navarro said that “Brahmins are profiteering at the expense of Indian people.” Perhaps, like Periyar and Udaynidhi Stalin, the trade advisor thinks Sanatan Dharma is like dengue and malaria, and needs to be exterminated along with Brahmins. Mercifully, the CEO of Google, Sundar Picchai, who happens to be a Tamil Brahmin, has not joined the circus.
But brown sepoys have. Many in the new social media war zone slammed and mocked Navarro for his foolish utterances. But out of nowhere, Navarro found ardent Indian supporters. Three Members of Parliament (MPs) proclaimed how Navarro was just being metaphorical, as “Brahmins” means the elites within the society. One of them delivered a lesson on the usage of the term “Boston Brahmins,” and scolded people for mocking Navarro for being “illiterate.”
Last heard of, this MP, and another voluble one from the BJP, were exchanging rapid gunfire on X. Who knows, if Jack Dorsey was still the CEO of Twitter (now X), activists in India would have squarely blamed ‘Brahmanical Patriarchy’ for Trump imposing 50 per cent tariffs on Indian exports, as also his latest missile to impose 200 per cent tariff on Indian pharmaceutical exports.
On a lighter note, the term Boston Brahmin takes us back to the Boston Tea Party of 1773. It seems local Americans were miffed with the Brahminical oppression being imposed by the British, who ruled America. These anti-caste activists threw off dozens of packs of Brahmanical tea from a ship into the sea. This triggered the American War of Independence. One British “Brahmin” infuriated the Americans more than the others. His name was Lord Cornwallis, who led the British army that slaughtered the rebels.
But like in Bollywood and Hollywood movies, the underdogs won, and America became a free and independent United States of America. However, some Brahmanical traits remained, and the Boston Brahmins kept using African-American blacks as slaves for almost another century. Slavery was a manifestation of Brahmanical Tyranny.
Lord Cornwallis, the British Brahmin, surrendered his army to George Washington in 1781. But since Brahmins are smart, apart from being oppressors in some nations, Cornwallis was not punished. He was promoted and sent to India as the Governor General. Inside India, he displayed the wiles of a tyrannical Brahmin.
Cornwallis oppressed the peasants with extortionate taxes. He consolidated the British Brahmin rule with the help of the original oppressors, the Indian Brahmins. But that was not his most deadly sin. In an act that will forever be condemned in history, he defeated and killed the glorious heartthrob of Indian liberals, Tipu Sultan. You see, the secular Tipu Sultan was India’s first “freedom fighter.”
When we are talking about Brahmins, let us not forget two other variations, Boston Brahmins in the US, and British Nabobs (not Brahmins but elites) in Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and in the decades of the twentieth. Boston Brahmins, like the Indian ones, were, and are, among Boston’s super elites and upper class. The former’s name was a takeaway from the Indian caste system. Boston Brahmins were, and are, associated with the clip-and-cultivated New England accent, and their origins lie in the earliest British colonists who sailed to America.
It is ironic that the Boston Brahmins, unlike their Indian counterparts, were of common origin. Only over time did they acquire the wealth, power, and influence to shape American society. As a few lines in a famous poem in those days read:
And this is good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots,
And the Cabots talk only to God.
Just before Cornwallis, British heads in India, and some of the lower-level officials, were dubbed as British Nabobs, which was a take from the Indian Nawabs, those rich rulers across the country, whose wealth and power were unimaginable. Some of the Britishers acquired massive personal wealth during their short stints in India as gifts and loot. When they returned to their native land, they successfully and unsuccessfully used this wealth to acquire political and societal power and influence. Hence, they became Nabobs.
But let us return to the present times. Let us talk about Brahmanical Tyranny as described in the modern American lexicon. Basically, the already-wealthy and powerful made more money from Russia’s cheap crude oil at the expense of the Indian citizens. The narrative works a bit. But the earlier favourable ratings of Trump are going down in his country, with 77 per cent of the respondents in a CNN poll saying tariffs have led to higher consumer prices.
Of course, blame this too on the Indian Brahmins. For they are the ones who are unwilling to accept Trump’s demands to lower tariffs on American agriculture and dairy exports. This is why the US was forced to impose high tariffs on Indian goods. An unusual, informal cross-border grouping is forming. Trump, Navarro, and a few Indian politicians may lead the next political fight against Modi.