Random Musing 31: The most amusing thing about the Riddhi Patel fiasco
The Riddhi Patel imbroglio has an important lesson about American democracy.
The most amusing thing about Riddhi Patel – who sounds like a Buzzfeed listicle humped a Vice report – isn’t that she is so radicalised beyond measure that she threatened to murder the mayor of Bakersfield for her ostensibly anti-Palestine stance. Neither is it the fact that she invokes Gandhi and Jesus while threatening violence nor that she looks as capable of inflicting violence as RCB is of lifting the IPL trophy.
It’s also not that she thinks Chaitra Navratri is a call to action for violent revolution (unless one is selling meat in Noida, then all bets are off). It’s not even her accent that makes you realise why Henry Higgins said that they never spoke English in America.
What really makes me chuckle is the forum she was present at and how Americans in city councils waste time, resources, and money discussing the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Unless you live under a rock and are free from consuming the vortex of nonsense that turns up on our social media feeds – which is likely to involve desis of various vintages, including those with a cheap internet connection, thanks to Mota Bhai – Riddhi Patel is an American of Indian origin (pronouns: they/them) who used slightly unparliamentary words during a city council meeting.
Their (this is not a typo) older social media posts showed that they hated among other things: Modi, BJP, Nikki Haley, Dinesh D’Souza, Bobby Jindal, and Hindu fascism. They were promptly arrested because while America loves preaching to the world about human rights, they don’t take someone publicly threatening a public official too kindly.
Either way, the real question here is why Bakersfield’s city council has heated discussions about the Israel-Gaza conflict. Unless Bakersfield PD has a division being sent to fight in Gaza, all this is moot. And if one were to argue that it’s our impetus to discuss skirmishes worldwide, why don’t the theatres of other conflicts like South Sudan or Azerbaijan make the cut? Is it because there aren’t enough people who care about them to vocalise their oppression? Or is it because they are black and mainstream media can't be bothered to shed light on their troubles?
Or perhaps that’s the true sign of a properly functioning democracy, where one has fulfilled all of Maslow’s basic needs, so you can spend time discussing an issue, that on the surface, barely affects you. We will know India has become a true democracy, one that will sit atop V-Dem’s or The Economist’s Democratic Index, when Gram Panchayats in Gorakhpur spend the better part of their day discussing the fentanyl crisis or gun violence in America or the lack of midday meals in the UK. That’s the day we will know that we too have become a Shining City on the top of the Hill, one that has the right to wage war anywhere in the world while preaching morality to the rest of it. To paraphrase the greatest bard of them all, into that haven of democracy, my father, let my country awake!