Other Stories (thank you Nivedita):
๐ India Today โ Harshvardhan Jain Scam
A man posed as a diplomat, set up fake embassies, and ran a multi-crore loan fraud racket via fake companies. He even issued โofficialโ visas.
๐ Business Standard โ Karnataka Vendor GST Nightmare
A vegetable vendor in Karnataka received a GST notice due to high UPI volume โ triggering a cascade of tax bureaucracy.
๐ Economic Times โ Indian Man Stabbed in Ireland
An Indian man in Ireland issues a public warning after surviving a random stabbing in Dublin.
๐ NDTV โ Hyderabad Man Kills Wife
In Hyderabad, a man stabbed his estranged wife to death at a birthday party for a child.
give me the links and I’ll add it to Open Thread?
also realised Nadiya Hussain got axed by the BBC
Pretty amazing at how proud this lady was about Pakistan and is unfazed about legality and societal disapproval.
Privileged sub continent has really developed these bubbles of sub culture where there is a lot of western influence.
During my youth this was exclusively the preserve of Bombay/Bangalore now it is in every tier 2 & 3 city.
Also I found it interesting that because gender roles are more demarcated it seems she felt more affirmed as a woman in Pakistan.
She’s talking about her own experience. I don’t necessarily agree with her analysis 100%.
It’s important to note that Asifa is British. As she notes in her interview, her transition was made possible by the NHS.
Pakistan has laws recognizing the “third sex”. They are allowed to use a different gender marker on passports and identity cards (neither “male” nor “female”).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_Persons_(Protection_of_Rights)_Act,_2018
In practice though sadly most “hijras” or “khawaja saras” remain either beggars or homosexual prostitutes. I wrote about this in my essay on the hijras but I guess you didn’t read beyond the title. They remain in these roles mostly due to poverty and lack of education. Children that don’t conform to gender expectations are often bullied at home and at school. This experience is common in India as well (as I referenced in my research paper).
One interesting thing about the Muslim world is that transgenders are relatively more accepted than homosexuals. As Asifa mentioned in her interview, Pakistan has laws against homosexuality. This is the same Section 377 that used to be in force in India. There’s nothing “Islamic” about it. Rather, it’s a British colonial law. However, unlike in India, there is no real movement to repeal this law. This is because Shariah punishments for homosexuality are a lot worse. As Asifa mentioned, Section 377 is rarely enforced. You would have to be caught in the act and since most sexual encounters take place in private spaces this is not really a big issue.
Even Islamic law holds that in order to convict someone of sodomy (or even of heterosexual rape or fornication) the actual act of penetration must have been witnessed by four Muslim men. So in practice, it’s very much “don’t ask don’t tell”.
This was one of the issues with General Zia’s Hudood Laws under which women who were raped usually ended up being charged with fornication (since they were admitting to sex outside of marriage which Islamically is a crime).
Iran is an example of a country that executes homosexuals but at the same time allows its citizens to surgically transition from one gender to another.
Ironically, one of the things many Pakistanis and Indians agree on is that homosexuality is a Western construct and not part of “South Asian” culture. To those people all I say is go and read the Kama Sutra which has an entire chapter on different types of “eunuchs” and appropriate sexual behavior with them.
Islam is obviously an extremely socially conservative religion and completely outlaws sex outside marriage (whether pre-marital or extra-marital). While a Muslim man is allowed four wives, he is not allowed any other sexual partners. Since gay marriage doesn’t exist in Islam, homosexual behavior is also strictly forbidden.
I guess you didnโt read beyond the title…
I read that piece in it’s entirety. You can take it as read that I won’t comment on something I didn’t read.
Your comment made it seem like you didn’t get very far. Because if you had read the piece entirely you would have known that I discussed khawajasaras in Pakistan.
The scope of the research was focused on India (which is fine). To insist that I cover eunuchs in the Ottoman Empire in the same 3000 word term paper is a bit unreasonable no?
I take your point that I could have titled it “The Hijras of the Indian subcontinent” but by and large the paper was about India. That’s not a red line.
“it’s” shouldn’t have an apostrophe. With an apostrophe it means “it is”. Do better.
Its ok. Sometimes one forgets to autocorrect the autocorrected. And sometimes one doesn’t. There’s a haiku in this, but I’m clutching my pearls now.
Now you’re missing the apostrophe where you should have used it.
Fundamental misuse of English reflects a subpar education. How sad.
A fundamental inability to recognize humour, sarcasm, irony is the saddest of all.
Sarcasm doesn’t play well on the Internet.
I fundamentally dislike you. I gather you’re not that fond of me either.
Yes, you’ve said before, rather often now. Don’t worry, I believe you. I’ve also said that I don’t reciprocate the antipathy, it’s going to be hard to believe that, but it’s what it is.
Oh dear! You comment on my posts implying that I have no right to write about India. You took great exception to the title “The Hijras of India” (not a brilliant intellectual move by the way). Your style of antipathy is simply more passive aggressive while I tend to respond with aggression.
I’m going to ask you politely one last time: Please refrain from commenting on my posts. I will not comment on your threads.
Unfortunately, we will be forced to deal with each other on “Open Threads”.
๐ and if I ask you politely to not “flood the zone” with your viewpoint?
You are not an admin. I don’t report to you. Buzz off.
Also take a second to consider what would have been your response if I had written an article called “The Pakistani beggar” and tied in how the religious charity in Islam provides the impetus for this.
OMG! Are you really this stupid or do you just enjoy pretending to be?
The essay was written for an undergraduate anthropology course. It was in no way intended as an attack on Hinduism.
I cited the work of Serena Nanda and Zia Jaffery. As far as I know, neither can be accused of being anti-Hindu.
I have already conceded that a more accurate title would have used the phrasing “Indian subcontinent” instead of “India”.
Also “Hijra” was not meant as an insult but as a descriptive term. Nanda used that term in her subtitle. Her book is actually called Neither Man Nor Woman: The Hijras of India.
I may be many things but you cannot credibly accuse me of being transphobic.
Just holding up a mirror. Both about your comment request and my response to your article and all the perceived passive aggressiveness by me.
Going to leave it here. When you’re in a receptive frame of mind read back these comments.
You’re defending accusations I haven’t made (or insinuated in any way)
Sir, you got very upset about the title “The Hijras of India”. Do you even read your own comments?
Your hypothetical article “The Pakistani Beggar” implies that you felt attacked and want to engage in a tit-for-tat response.
You are insinuating a lot more than you think you are.
Don’t play games with me. It’s very clear to me that I possess a far higher degree of intellectual acumen than you ever will. (That’s perfectly fine. I’m resigned to the fact that I’m far more intelligent than most people).
Indosaurus:
If you really want to write an article called “The Pakistani Beggar” go ahead. It’s a stupid tit-for-tat response but unlike you I’m not petty enough to criticize an essay just because of the title.
Feel free.
I despise passive aggressiveness. I much prefer people like Nivedita who bother to actually be aggressive aggressive. But because she’s a lady she can cry the victim card.
How do you know I’m not gay or trans? Maybe I rank higher in the oppression olympics than you do?
The suggestion was purely an illustration (a hypothetical thought exercise) just to elucidate my comment w.r.t your article.
It should be very clear in the phrasing that I have no intent to write such an article.
Subsequently I even explained I was only holding up a mirror. There is no tit for tatting here, I am simply taking the pains to explain, as an assist to empathise with an opposing view point.
The trouble with convincing yourself that someone is an enemy is that even the most benign statements sound aggressive, if not overtly then sneakily. They must be even more dastardly for it! Ad infinitum….
Q.E.D even the most assiduous attempt at helping you understand intent will be rejected once you have made up your mind.
You’re not “helping me understand” anything. I have determined that your style of argumentation is to become passive aggressive.
I’m a Kashmiri-Punjabi. Our style of argumentation is to become aggressive aggressive. Belligerence is met with belligerence. Disrespect with disrespect.
Buzz off! You are another person who is far less intelligent and well-read than I am.
From Himal SouthAsian:
“Asim Munir’s promotion to Field Marshal signals an authoritarian Pakistan” by Salman Rafi Sheikh (the author is apparently a professor at LUMS)
https://www.himalmag.com/politics/pakistan-military-asim-munir-authoritarianism?
I’m not necessarily endorsing this article since I haven’t read it yet (received an email digest from Himal “SouthAsia this week”) but I have a feeling that I will end up agreeing broadly with its conclusions. I’ve been saying since “Operation Sindoor” that India’s actions only served to strengthen the Pakistan Army’s grip on the country.
And of course Donald Trump’s hosting Asim Munir at the White House only serves to underscore that he recognizes that the person calling the shots in Pakistan is COAS and not the figurehead civilian PM Shehbaz Sharif (For his part Shehbaz is actually fine with that. He just doesn’t want to end up like Imran Khan).
If it’s any help, the Japanese (& Chinese & Koreans) obsessively cover everything in multiple nested layers of plastic. Much as this bugs me no end they’ve been at it for ages (since the 80s atleast) and it hasn’t seem to have affected the national health numbers.
Maybe thereโs hope yet, though the fertility rates (for a variety of reasons including pollution) have taken a dive. Theyโre all well below replacement rate at this point.
Our new study reveals that reductions in air pollution โ particularly in China and east Asia โ are a key reason for this faster warming. Cleanup of sulphur emissions from global shipping has been implicated in past research
In contrast India’s pollution is reducing global warming.
Unintended Consequences
China’s Clean Air Could Be Behind an Acceleration in Global Warming
https://www.sciencealert.com/chinas-clean-air-could-be-behind-an-acceleration-in-global-warming
“Why Buddhist Thailand & Cambodia are at war over Hindu temples & heritage across colonial borders”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtZa0nk3_Fw
Analysis by Shekhar Gupta
“Martyr’s Day row has reopened Kashmir’s deepest wounds” (from The Print)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7g6SkRZ4nag
A good review of Sam Dalrymple’s new book:
https://thewire.in/books/the-inscrutability-of-partition
This part is especially important:
The romantic notion in much of South Asia that partitions are โbadโ is unsupported by evidence. Its force comes from the catastrophic mishandling of the partitions in the region, most notably between India and Pakistan, but as Dalrymple demonstrates, also India and Burma/Myanmar and others. Borders do not need to mean violence, as the European Union has demonstrated, but too frequently they do because nationalisms are enmeshed with the dehumanisation of โothersโ based on race or creed. This, really, is the tragedy of our partitioned globe, and despite the problems of Dalrympleโs book, it does a great job in showing how nasty and insane humans can be when they drink from that poison.
๏ปฟ
I would like to see Greater Hindustan like the EU
It’s a complete non-starter. I used to have this naive thought like you but it’s a pipe dream.
Indians and Pakistanis hate each other (most of us). We can’t even be in the same WhatsApp groups let alone a geopolitical union.
More importantly, India and Pakistan continue to dispute Kashmir. The EU could only form after France and Germany gave up fighting over Alsace Lorraine. Alsace Lorraine is part of France and Germany is fine with that. There are open borders so no one really cares.
Also all EU countries are nominally Christian. A majority Hindu country and a majority Muslim country are never going to be friends.
I am a centre-left Pakistani and I am constantly accused on this blog of hating Hindus. You want to see people who actually hate Hindus? Meet the Pakistanis much further to my right.
On this blog, it has been amply demonstrated that many middle-class Indians (in Pandit Brown’s words) actually hate Muslims. The Islamophobia expressed here makes me deeply uncomfortable.
Nawaz Sharif could have made peace with Vajpayee (had Musharraf not orchestrated Kargil). No Pakistani government can make peace with Modi.
I don’t know what will happen if Congress gets back in power.
I would like to see Greater Hindustan like the EU
Not a view shared by the Majority of Sri Lankans.
Anyway the EU will breakup specially with the declining Economies of Germany and France. Immigration issues will be the knockout blow
Agreed! Sri Lankans have some legitimate issues with India. Perhaps a post from you outlining what you see the Sri Lankan position to be?
A South Asian EU is not going to happen. We can’t even get SAARC to function (mostly because India refuses to let it do so).
This is an essay my father wrote for his blog The South Asian Idea way back in 2013. It’s called “In Search of Diwali in Lahore”. When my dad was the Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at LUMS, he was involved in organizing the first ever Diwali celebrations at LUMS. There was of course opposition from more conservative elements of the university (who as usual tended to be School of Science and Engineering types)
https://thesouthasianidea.wordpress.com/2013/11/09/in-search-of-diwali-in-lahore/
He was also involved in organizing the first Christmas party for the janitorial staff.
your father seems like a Great man and Visionary!! Kudos to him..
You may be interested in his Substack
https://anjumaltaf.substack.com/
caste in Pakistan – https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2020/12/15/it-is-time-to-talk-about-caste-in-pakistan-and-pakistani-diaspora
I typed into Google “comparison between Kashmir and Alsace-Lorraine” and found this article on Substack.
https://ramalhete.substack.com/p/return-to-normalcy
This part jumped out at me:
As the colonial powers had destroyed the traditional forms of governance and established colonial bureaucracies instead, when colonies became independent, it was frequently easier to keep the borders than to divide the territories again in a way that made sense. Sometimes it got even worse, as the present conflict between India and Pakistan makes clear: The British decided to partition their former colony into a Muslim part and a Hindu part, and the minorities within each side were the immediate object of ethnic (or rather religious) cleansing, and around one million people paid with their lives for that foolishness.
What would have been, at worst, a very local conflict between small princely states for the sparsely populated Kashmir is now a conflict between two nuclear-armed โnation-statesโ, neither of which is a nation. Both have many linguistic, cultural, and ethnic nations within their territories. For Pakistan, India, or any of the big African countries to become a nation, they would have to undergo the same bloody process that turned France (or the US) into one. They would have to kill people and destroy cultures, impose linguistic and cultural uniformity, and either make it all stop at the border or change the border at gunpoint. Germany and France have been stealing Alsace-Lorraine from one another at gunpoint back and forth for quite some time.
You don’t have to agree with it. I certainly disagree with his contention that Pakistan is not a nation. But it’s an interesting POV.
all nations are imagined to some extent
Agree.
Would you go so far as to say that even “India” is imagined?
just read the full article- fantastic!!
For XTM (not for my ideological enemies on this site):
https://www.academia.edu/47164425/Enemies_within_and_enemies_without_The_besieged_self_in_Pakistani_textbooks
This is a very important article by Dr. Rubina Saigol that focuses on what “Pak Studies” textbooks teach children about both the external enemy (India and Hindus) and the internal enemy (specifically the Bengali). This was part of the readings for a course I took at LUMS as an undergrad entitled “Anthropological Perspectives on Ethnicities and Nationalisms”.
Since I grew up abroad, I was lucky enough not to have to take “Pak Studies”. India is now trying something similar with their NCERT textbooks designed to raise a new generation of Muslim-hating BJP voting bigots.
“Society: Transforming Gen Jogi ” by A.B. Arisar
https://www.dawn.com/news/1926734/society-transforming-gen-jogi
Interesting article about an education initiative among a scheduled caste community in Umerkot (Pakistan’s only Hindu majority district).
“Israel Guilty of Genocide, on Fast Road to Becoming a Pariah State–If Not One Already: Gershon Baskin”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZIj0x7yFLU&
I really admire those Israelis who are willing to call out their country for what it is doing.
https://scroll.in/article/1084887/ramachandra-guha-it-is-time-for-india-to-redeem-its-betrayed-promises-to-jammu-and-kashmir
I have great respect for Ram Guha (though even in this article he takes some quite gratuitous potshots at Pakistan). May his tribe increase in India!
I love India and Indians. If I wasn’t so passionate about the country, I would not be engaging on BP. However, Hindutvadis (both of the soft and hard kind) are my ideological enemies.