Day: May 13, 2018

Post Modernism in India

I don’t want to write a post, but your question is a good one, and let me try to express my thoughts about it here. Before that, I am thankful to you (and Zack) for respectfully engaging my bizzare theories: typically Indian liberals refuse to engage fringe ideas like this, and simply brand these views as not worth considering. That you don’t do so says something about your innate goodness and generosity.

Now as to why the BJP does not do anything about what I claim to be discrimination against Hindus. It is a very good question. For instance, why does a party which supposedly only has to pander to Hindus increase minority affairs funding by 62%, or start free coaching for Muslim aspirants of Union Public Services Commission? Why did the BJP Government of the state of Haryana decide to allocate 13 public spaces for Namaz, instead of asking the rich Wakf board to either allocate space itself or pay up for the purpose? Why is it that the central Government’s official textbook make named criticisms of exactly one religion, namely Hinduism (the textbook was introduced by Congress, it is written by heavily anti-BJP people, but why is the Government continuing it)? It looks quite bizzare, when you consider that so few Muslims vote for BJP.

Continue reading Post Modernism in India

A must watch

For those who like world/ethnic music + Rock. This is the entire movie, just saw clips 10 years ago. Something for all. WWF (wrestling), Child Birth, Travelogue, ethnic and rock music. My favorite clip is at 00:42, the Bauls.  Whats with the Afro of the Baul singer.  The young Baul kid is Paban Das Baul.  He is quite well known in Europe. (YouTube search here).   Maki Kazumi in the Baul Clip I posted a few days back is still a Baul performing/evangelizing, monar manush. (Dont understand the words except manush which I assume means man).

I think, just intellectualizing by reading books about the world does not cut it.  Travel (wish I could do more) and into the hinterlands.  I have crossed the US three times with a tent, in an old Chevy Celebrity (had 160K miles when a Professor (Akira Akubo) gave it to me.   Montreal/Toronto to Florida and New Orleans at least 3 times. The Bronx before it became gentrified.  Camden/Baltimore.
Plus Myanmar backpacking in 2005 when the county just opened.

Vagabunden Karawane: A musical trip through Iran, Afghanistan and India in 1979 (1 hr 28 mins)

When writing about India is actually just writing about America

The web magazine Slate posted a piece, Friends From India which I had initially thought was a parody. Its subtitle is: “I grew up watching the show in Mumbai. I worry about the damage its gender stereotypes still do there.”

It’s really bizarre. The author is Indian, and supposedly is making a comment about India. But the piece isn’t about India at all, but the worries and concerns of a liberal person in the West. Friends isn’t that important in driving social views in India, and gender relations and attitudes toward homosexuality in India have little to do with Friends. But, today Friends seems retrograde to many American liberals, because of its attitude toward gender relations and gayness, which were mainstream in the 1990s.

So it seems here that to get another piece on Friends and social justice into Slate, they just commissioned a piece that was officially about India, but quite obviously wasn’t.

This gets to a major dynamic in American society today which worries me somewhat: foreign affairs being filtered through purely American concerns and perceptions. Americans care so little about the rest of the world that they turn the rest of the world into the United States in substance, if not exterior styles.

The problem is that we are living through a great transition in the world. America is no longer as much the center, and economic, social, and political, power will rebalance toward Asia. In such a multipolar world pandering to purely American preoccupations will lead to gross misunderstandings and likely catastrophe.

Brown Pundits