Brown Pundit tour of Pakistan

I have been to India almost 10 times and I have a deep love for my ancestral home.

However I suspect no commentator in Brown Pundits “trans-Wagah” have actually visited Pakistan. It would make for far more informed comments to actually visit the country.

My best friend’s good friend is a Marathi who did his PhD on Pakistan. He had never been to the country and my friend & I were often amused by his pronouncements (he had a ton of facts, most of them correct, about why Pakistan was so crap). When he went to Pakistan he absolutely fell in love with the country and his entire instagram feed was flooded with the beauty of Interior Sindh.

Visiting the country would do so much to get a feel for what Pakistan is since it is the object of so much speculation & fascination (Pakistan is the very flawed idealisation of the Mughal state)..

Are all religions/ideologies reformable ?

Are there no constraints to ideas/ideologies,religions that can be reformed?. Or anything can be reformed?.
Is it possible to get Hitler admiring people to not be racist ? or to stop hating jews?. Or is it the case that no matter the endless creative de tours one takes it will in the end fail as some people will see it straight forward and follow the example of hitler and become racist/anti semitic.

If individual leaders are the anchors that would constrain ideologies like nazism along with its other ideas, can something similar be true for other ideologies & religions? Should we be surprised by ISIS considering the model they were following?. Will it not be the case that for all the reforms, there will always be break away movements that will once again want to follow the original teachings with straight forward views of the times?.

I leave it for you to ponder. This is very important, because there are people who would want to believe that all ideas can be redeemed and to express doubts over this would invite charges of bigotry. If a bad religion x can be tweaked, another bad religion y can also be tweaked, does that mean all bad religions can be tweaked to be moderate and if some one disagrees , is it enough to simply call them as bigots as an answer in itself?. Or could they be true. If they are true, would it not be the case that the world that unfortunately ends up with that particular religion/ideology, many good minded people of that world will end up giving cover for it will eventually hurt them all?. Politeness itself can become a catastrophe?.

The appropriate answer to such answer would be to preserve a world where one isnt entirely polite, one is willing to call out all religions/ideologies and test and prod them. And be allowed to declare that some or all ideas cannot be truly be reformed and encourage people to abandon them in its entirety. The proof of burden of moderation should be on particular ideologies/religions & not on everyone else to be polite.

Wonderful news out of Pakistan

https://www.dawn.com/news/1393766/senate-unanimously-approves-bill-empowering-transgenders-to-determine-their-own-identity

The Senate on Wednesday unanimously approved a bill for the protection of rights of transgender persons, empowering them to determine their own gender identity.

If it goes on to become a law, the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill 2017, presented by Senator Dr Karim Khwaja, will enable trans people to be recognised as they perceive themselves and register with government offices as transgenders.

“This means that under the proposed law they would not need to appear before a medical board to decide their gender,” Chairperson of the Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights Senator Nasreen Jalil had told Dawn last month.

“The transgender community is opposed to the idea of setting up a medical board that should determine their gender fearing that they might be subjected to embarrassment and harassment. The bill provides protection to the members of transgender community and prohibits attack on their self-esteem and mistreatment,” the MQM senator had said.

No surprise it’s MQM who spearheaded the initiative.

Brown Pundits