On India's age of ambition, the secret sauce, polycrisis, China's diplomats
a curated list of exceptional articles for your weekly intellectual curiosity
Dear Reader,
This is the first edition of Fuzzy Notes, a weekly newsletter on politics, philosophy, society, culture, and international affairs.
This week’s newsletter consists of exciting essays on India’s new parliament, Ben Okri’s dystopian short story “Secret Sauce”, Virginia Woolf’s advice on reading, the unprecedented rise of the term “polycrisis”, and the travails of being a diplomat in China.
Along with the excerpts of these articles, some complementary readings are also linked in the newsletter.
Politics: On India’s Age of Ambition
In his recent opinion article: ‘India’s Age of Ambition’, political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta reflected on how India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party Government captures the “dominant emotional registers of…[India’s] national ambition”. He writes:
Everything has to be imagined in terms of the “new”, a break with a recent past whose greatest sin was its lack of ambition. Time has to be redefined, not in terms of a few years, but in terms of whole eons.
This is the inauguration of Amrit Kaal. Scale has to be redefined. It is all too easy to dismiss the relentless public construction as authoritarian kitsch. But often, time consecrates aesthetics as much as taste. But this fascination with modernist infrastructure, too, is tapping into a revolt against a previous kind of mediocrity, the low ambition of India’s Public Works Department.
Our command over history is now stamped through a new infrastructural nationalism. The excessive use of Vishwaguru or the “Mother of Everything” may border on historical inanity. But its function is to keep the emotional furnace of national ambition burning.
Indian PM Narendra Modi has tapped into this critical register, the dominant mood for glory—a renewed impulse of ambitious role in the world. India looks at itself through a new avatar: an assertive, ambitious “civilisational” state on the global stage.
Mehta’s article is a refreshing take on how the new parliament, in its lingua franca, represents a “new India” that has now become a symbol of democracy amid the fears of waning democratic institutions, increasing minority prosecution, and press turning propaganda machines.
Compliment this article with Daniel Brook’s ‘Narendra Modi’s New New Delhi’ for a detailed take on India’s new parliament—and its varied takes.
Society: Ben Okri and the Secret Souce
Novelist Ben Okri’s short story ‘The Secret Souce’ published in The New Yorker, looks at the Orwellian theme of “something had been done to the water”—and that people have stopped asking questions to Governments.
“To question the water you drink,” the philosopher said, “is to question the very foundation of the society you live in. It is like questioning the air you breathe.”
“But some do exactly that,” Venus said.
“It is not wise to doubt your reality,” the philosopher said. “Because there is no other.”
In this short story, Okri touches upon the themes of how society could be tampered with, modern life reinstituted, dissent reimagined as a thought crime, and citizens made docile—incapable of seeing the difference, being able to ask questions.
Elsewhere, Okri admits, “I wanted to explore what happens when reality becomes its own conspiracy theory.”
Culture: How to Read a Book Like Virginia Woolf
In this blog post, ‘How to read a book like Virginia Woolf’, I have discussed how Woolf teaches us to read books. However, she caveats it:
The only advice… that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions.
If this is agreed between us, then I feel at liberty to put forward a few ideas and suggestions because you will not allow them to fetter that independence which is the most important quality that a reader can possess.
Woolf tells us to read a book like its author writes it. Likewise, every author, she contends, has a unique way of writing their stories, essays, etc. Some focus on characters, some on the surroundings, some on relations, and others on narrative coherence—and each of them has to read keeping this in mind.
Complement reading this essay with Orwell’s tips for writing well.
Philosophy: Polycrisis and Its Discontents
Some words stick. And polycrisis is one such word. Since 2022, “polycrisis” has been used, misused, and abused in all global political and economic discussions.
Chances are that you may have heard the word “Polycrisis” being used in classroom discussions, diplomatic engagements, policy forums, etc. Even your TV news anchors may use it to sound cool occasionally. But what does it mean?
The following essay on Aeon engages with the term “polycrisis” and the nuances of the debates around “a” polycrisis or “the” polycrisis. Is it a common noun or a proper noun? Is it referring to multiple events occurring at once?
And if so, is it referring to events such as the pandemic, the war, and poverty happening all at once, or is it all events causing an event? (For instance, the Anthropocene condition; is this a result of polycrisis?)
Is polycrisis unique to this era—the current day and age—or an existential condition of human life, say “history happening”? This engaging essay discusses these various nuances in the debate on polycrisis.
If we understand the polycrisis as a description of our specific era with its existential problems, we can agree and disagree about the details. We can debate about the possibility to ‘decouple’ economic growth from environmental impact, about the tension between ‘green growth’ and a transformative change of societies. We can argue about the potential to predict and to plan for future changes. Overall, the discussion is about this stage in history, about us and those coming after us, about the situation we have inherited.
Complement this reading on polycrisis with Adam Tooze’s ‘Welcome to the Age of Polycrisis’, his video explaining Polycrisis, and Christopher Hobson’s Substack account on polycrisis.
International Affairs: Travails of Diplomats in China
Oftentimes, a particular fascination exists for the diplomat’s job in our lives. The grandeur lives, we think, they live(ed) in foreign countries (as representatives of our country) feels like a fascinating story.
In this Foreign Policy article on ‘The Endless Frustration of Chinese Diplomacy’, Cindy Yu unpacks how fear of vanishing and unwavering display of party allegiance make for Chinese diplomats.
Traditionally, diplomats are supposed to represent their nation—but also to build bridges between countries, especially over difficult issues. They maintain communication channels and find fudges to resolve seemingly intractable differences of position.
This doesn’t seem to be the case for Chinese diplomats, whose role is more to “keep foreigners away from Chinese policymakers,” said John Gerson, a former advisor to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on China. “It’s a moat.” Their role is to protect and bolster an authoritarian regime keen for the world’s approval but unable to take any approbation.
In authoritarian countries, especially China, diplomats have weirdly cautious and complex lives. Their lives are rigid regarding how close they get to foreign diplomats, how much they can negotiate, and how different they do their diplomacy.
Rather than being constructive, it is bureaucratic, opaque, and often defensive. Diplomats have unique roles in China. As diplomats abroad, they tell what China thinks, and as hosts of other diplomats in their country, they tell what China thinks.
Complement this essay by listening to the discussion on Chinese wolf-warrior diplomacy at the Asia Society forum.
It is the end of this newsletter. I hope this reading list will keep you busy for the next week as you straddle between family, work, and leisure.
See you next week! Until then, happy reading :)