Author: X.T.M

Smash the Brahmanical Patriarchy

X.T.M Ā· November 20, 2018 Ā· 58 comments

Above Ellen Pompeo talks about the burdens of being an Elder Race..

Thoughts on the biggest issue rocking Indian Twitter?

* Jack Dorsey and Lewis Hamilton must be slapped with lifetime bans to India.

* the Indian government must suspend all Twitter accounts and F1 racing (Mercedes should be banned).

* Any apology must show absolutely contrition and anyone demonstrating Coloniser Privilege should be publicly shamed.

I saw Jack D’s twitter page; his appropriation of Dharmic motifs is simply shameful. As if his ancestors did not cause enough havoc to our beloved lands with their divide and rule and other such nonsense.

In fact there is good argument that it was British who had a very keen interest in reviving caste. Admittedly caste goes back to the very early genesis of what it means to be Indian (much like the gods our tripartite heritage of Aryan, Dravidian & Aboriginal).

Of course I’m projecting an extraordinarily “Pakistani approach” but for Pakis we live and die by Izzat. Partition was also the loss of a mindset as well as everything else; the one where honor comes before all else..

Why I Repeated Aasia Bibiā€™s Alleged Words

X.T.M Ā· November 19, 2018 Ā· 48 comments

Kabir was right to question why I repeated the remarks Aasia Bibi was accused of making. The point did not require repeating them. But the principle did.

I try to be respectful towards all religions. Iā€™ve even been accused of being too sympathetic to Islam and to Pakistani narratives. But many people still do not grasp that the rage some believers feel when they think their Prophet has been insulted is the rage I feel when a powerless Christian woman spends years on death row for something she did not doā€”or had every moral right to say.

Aasia Bibi is the clearest example in our era of what happens when a blasphemy taboo becomes a blasphemy law.

And what happens when a blasphemy law becomes a political weapon.

If we cannot speak the very words that put her in prison, then the injustice done to her cannot be fully confronted. Sanitising the allegation only sanitises the cruelty.

This is the core of the matter:

Freedom of expression is meaningless unless it protects speech that some consider offensive or sacred.

It cannot protect only polite dissent. It must also protect speech that religious authority hates.

I donā€™t indulge in theatrics or gratuitous insults. But the principle has to be clear: in a free society, no religion, none, can demand immunity from criticism, satire, or even irreverence. If believers wish to revere, they are free to do so; if others do not, they are free not to.

What troubles me is the growing chorus of Western liberal Muslims and ā€œhijabi feministā€ activists who demand respect under the banner of ā€œIslamophobia,ā€ while simultaneously insisting that Muhammad must never be depicted, mocked, or even discussed without ritualised reverence. This is simply a diplomatic version of the same rule that keeps women like Aasia in prison: the Prophetā€™s honour is more important than human freedom.

And the moral inconsistency is glaring.

There is deafening anger over Gaza. There is a whisper, at best, over Aasia Bibi. For some, outrage is selective, calibrated to global cause-identity. Aasia is inconvenient because she reveals an uncomfortable truth about the political uses of piety.

This is why I repeated the alleged words. Because the principle they engage is non-negotiable:

In a free society, all ideas, including religious ones, must be open to criticism.

No faith gets to write exceptions into the law.

Aasia Bibi paid for that principle with a decade of her life.

The least I can do is speak the words that she was punished forā€”even if only to show how absurd it was to punish her at all.

Why has Imran Khan aged so badly-

X.T.M Ā· November 19, 2018 Ā· 5 comments

In the top photo he’s with Sheikh Zayed of the UAE. This is them in the 70’s. Imran these days looks so haggard and old especially in comparison with his dashing younger self.

The Emir on the end pretty much looks the same; in fact looks even better since he’s more au fait.

Unfortunately for Imran; I think he became a born-again Muslim a little too late for his own good. There’s obviously been a lot of sharab in his wilder days and god knows what else.

It’s part of the reason as to why I have such a visceral dislike of substances; they can age you really quickly. Black don’t crack but brown also has pretty amazing staying power.

That’s why when I see Indians boast about how much they drink I tend to roll my eyes. Alcohol is no great panacea and instead for Brown people we must guard against weight gain. I wonder if there is salient Vedic wisdom on staying young as long as possible.

I do notice that as one ages sleep is increasingly an issue. Our 9-5 industrialised tempo with some leisure time thrown in after doesn’t make for long and conducive rest periods, which is necessary to our psyche and well-being.

It may sound controversial but I imagine the outbreak of depression and mental illness probably has some simple solutions. There was big news over the weekend that 17 children (most of them autistic or on the spectrum) have transitioned at a single school.

I may sound a bit old-school here but I suspect there’s a deep spiritual malaise in the West that’s almost consuming it. It’s why poorer nations aren’t necessarily unhappier ones; there’s much to be said for spiritual and social solidarity once basic fundamental needs & wants are met.

Why I love being Paki-

X.T.M Ā· November 19, 2018 Ā· 30 comments

https://twitter.com/janatzaf/status/1064008024459829249?s=12

This cracked me up to no end.

On a serious note I tend to follow a fair bit of Twitterstan. It’s a lot more fun than Twitterdesh.

Twitterdesh is a bit scary since a lot of the Bollywood celebs have fled to Instagram and we’re left with a bunch of intellectuals constantly griping about Hinduism losing out to Islam.

Twitterstan happens to have a lot of Pakistan’s glamorous politicians; Bakhtawar Bhutto has a pretty fascinating account. What I haven’t fathomed yet is why haven’t the PPP & PML-N made a Grand Democratic Coalition to punch back against Imran & the Army.

I picked up this piece (via Razib’s twitter) on the New York Times on China’s unique rise.

I think Pakistan is a fairly advanced and democratic country compared to the rest of the Muslim world (which is a fairly low bar). However the strong pull of the Raj’s legacy & an Indian cultural orientation mitigate the harsher aspects of Islam.

I was quite vocal in the last podcast with Razib; I ranted a fair bit since I’ve been so angry about the Aasia Bibi situation.

I’m actually not so angry with Pakistanis back home but our Diaspora abroad who cower behind the veil of the Woke & Social Justice Warriors.

If we are all meant to constantly check our Privileges then what about the rights of the most under-privileged person there is, Aasia B.

This is why I find the Left at the moment to have betrayed the legacy of liberalism whatsoever. It’s fighting for what is expedient rather than what is right. It doesn’t mean the Right is any better but the apostolic mantle that the Left has shrouded itself in means that it must be held to the same standards as religious authority. The Death of Christianity as a pervasive moral code has left a huge moral vacuum in large sections of society.

Biryani Night

X.T.M Ā· November 18, 2018 Ā· 74 comments

I swear I’m not spamming but it so happened last night the Cambridge South Asian Forum hosted an event (biryani was the reward) about the Kashmiri docu-film Harud. This was after the Kashmir play last Saturday night.

It was a slow film done in the Persian style (the lead actor’s father was actually Persian but had flawless Urdu).

As an aside this is the second time I’ve seen an Iranian actor (the Nargis character in Sacred Games is actually an Iranian) and their command of the Urdu language is flawless. Contrast this to Katrina Kaif who still needs to be dubbed.

I’ll bullet point my observations:

(1.) the post-modern India literati is simply scathing. I cannot imagine Pakistanis academically discussing the secession of Baluchistan.

(2.) I made a very controversial comment last night at the round table (there were 25 of us; no Muslims all upper castes except me and I was the only Pakistani) saying India can’t understand her Muslim minority.

(3.) I also made points about the very high cultural affinity between Kashmiri Muslims and Pakistan (we are all part of the Indus Valley). Did not go down well; when I saw Srinagar it reminded me of one of our cities on the Indus..

(4.) Yesterday one of my friends made the spectacular suggestion that South Asia needs a Good Friday Agreement. We can all accept the current borders if they become (much) softer.

(5.) Europe spent 50 million lives and a century of war (hot & cold) and now the EU is interlocking the continent into one unit. Why can’t India do the same about SAARC ex Pakistan?

(5a.) Why doesn’t South Asia have free movement of capital, good and people beyond the troublesome northwestern bits.

(6.) Prosperity and cultural autonomy can go a very long way to alleviate tensions in the region; the Indo-Pak corner is simply one area. Why can’t rich Indians do lavish weddings in Sri Lanka or the Maldives instead of Thailand or Italy?

Tweet of the Day

X.T.M Ā· November 17, 2018 Ā· 42 comments

I personally believe we are all racist, classist and *bigoted* to some extent.

It is our evolutionary makeup that prefers our *tiny* tribe to the whole mess of humanity and only something as powerful as religious belief binds us into a larger consciousness.

The West has been secular for a good century (maybe even longer) and the Western left has adopted a curious mix of neo-Puritanism and Platonism.

They want straight white men to constantly purge and guard their inner thoughts against any type of “ism.”

Thankfully our Brown pallour acts as a sort of shield since frankly the larger society isn’t particularly interested in what we have to say and furthermore we can’t be accused of privilege yet.

I see Western civ consuming itself over absurdities (even now a centre-right individuals knows how to police one’s thoughts on certain topics) while the Rest begin their long march onward and upward.

While angry and vocal Muslim minorities mingle with these left reaction; the Eastern powers (Chindia) are only growing by the day.

It may be small, it may be imperceptible leaps but the day will come when Lewis Hamilton will have his visa revoked for making such comments about India’s poverty.

China has already abandoned Western ideological scaffolding and gone back to some hybridised Confucian ideal of government.

It will only be a matter of time when India sheds so much of this false & imported secularism and adopt a Hindu framework of tolerance.

India’s majority greviance is that the Hindu majority are constantly making concessions to a Muslim minority while across the border Pakistan is reshaping itself. 5 more years of Modi and the Overton window will shift where Rahul Gandhi will have to cast himself a pukka and proper Hindu instead of some Nehruvian secularist/socialist.

Hum Hindu Nahin

X.T.M Ā· November 16, 2018 Ā· 70 comments

https://twitter.com/himalayanfiend/status/1063485416643411968?s=21

This is an interesting thread about the 5 major events of Sikhism. I was particularly interested in the Tat Khalsa who basically carved off Sikhism from Hinduism in the late 1800’s.

The tract was called Hum Hindu Nahin.

I have fairly complex thoughts on the subject of Hinduism.

I do think that there is a fairly pervasive “low Hinduism” that is the substrate of the Subcontinent (in the same manner AASI is). This low Hinduism manifests itself in the intense Pir worship of Pakistan, it borders on shirk. It also explains the Pakistan’s pagan propensities for superstition, astrology and all other manners of folk belief that even a millennia of unhealthy Islamic purification simply can never erase.

The High Hinduism of the Vedas etc is simply constrained to core Aryavarta. The High Hinduism (Diwali, Ganesh, Shiva, Holi etc) is simply absent in Pakistan (either by design, accident or history) and its something Pakistanis simply do not connect to.

On a personal note I who would like Pakistanis to look upon our Hindu past in the same manner the Persians, Greeks & Romans looks upon their Classical heritage. But when the Brahmin brigade drone on insistently about our ancestry and heritage for us it does create a bit of backlash and we all (psychologically) flee to Mecca, Qurasyh and Bin Qasim.

I can’t possibly comment on the Sikhs but I imagine they are in a halfway house with regards to their High Hinduism.

(1.) for the purposes of Partition they grouped with Hindus unlike the Ahmedis and even Christians who sort of worked with the Muslims.

(2.) the Khatri and Jat Sikh divide is also apparent where the Jat Sikhs are most pronounced in their distinct identity (Canada seems a refuge for irredentist South Asian ethnic groups since even the Sri Lankan Tamil nationalists have their base there).

(3.) Sikh identity crystallised in opposition to Muslims and the Mughals in the historic era (Bandi Chor & all that) but the main *threat* to individual Sikh identity is assimilation into a Hindu-Indian framework as opposed to the Muslims (hence why the Khalistani movement is friendly with Pakistan).

(4.) in terms of the “Dharmic identity”‘ whereby Sikhs, Jains & Buddhists group with Hindus in a broad India majoritarian identity; that seems fairly salient in much the same way ethnic whites were able to join the Wasp majority post WW2.

I also notice with interest the Tat Khalsa were helped in their translation efforts of their holy book by a coloniser; I see the imperialist hand in attempting to divide Indian religion.

On another note the Social Justice Ghazi in me was deeply offended by MP Johnny Mercer’s tweet.

I notice colonisers of all hues (see Lewis Hamilton’s latest controversial comments on the F1 in India) love to take potshots at Brownitude in moments of their crises.

I also found this article by Steve about blonde children being more “striking” to be rather ridiculous (as were his suggestion that Prince Harry married Ms. Markle to save the monarchy).

How India own-goaled itself on Kashmir

X.T.M Ā· November 16, 2018 Ā· 60 comments

A Kashmiri pandit shares a story about his family’s tragic exile. It just makes me wonder what was India’s end-goal on J&K especially with regard to the Valley.

Also an amazing thread on the Deoband-Barelvi dynamics (interesting both are from the Urdu heartland imported into the Punjab)

https://twitter.com/napoha_/status/1063119568514793472?s=21

Of course Britain is in the midst of Brexit convulsions so at the moment I’m more of a “Brexit Pundit.”

As an interesting aside since we were discussing about skin colour earlier; it’s so evident to see the well-groomed lean and Normanesque Tory MPs set off against the portly Anglo-Saxonish Labour members. I know it’s difficult to quantify somehow but the ghost of the Normans is so evident in the social classes of England.

As for skin colour in the Subcontinent I think we have 3 divisions.

(1.) The AASI’s, which are sort of co-equivalent to the Negritos and Anadamese Islanders (one of the first coastal waves out of Africa that somehow also ended up in the Amazon). It’s interesting that they are substrate to every South Asian population (I think there are trace amounts in Central Asia, Afghanistan and even Iran).

(2.) the “Dravidian” farmers out of Iran. They are probably related to the J1/J2 types and might be an olive skinned population. Prominent in Sindh and Southern Pakistan through to South India (high % in Gujarat – must have been a locus of some sort).

(3.) our beloved Aryans who are especially prevalent among Brahmins, the Punjab and Haryana (though arguably the Haryanvis and East Punjab descend from Scythians to some extent). These look “European” but it’s a very different look to #2.

The Aryans are conventional European (light eyes, light hair, white skin) the ancient Dravidians would have (probably) looked like Middle Easterners (olive skin, dark hair dark eyes) and the AASI looks like Papua New Guineans.

Of course India being an ancient region these populations have all compounded to varying degrees but it explains why the Pathans & Brahmins look European but the Sindhis (Muslims mainly/ Sindhi Hindus are Punjabi Khatri migrants) and Gujarati (non Brahmin) have a browner Olive look.

Hindu Wife killed by ex for marrying Muslim man

X.T.M Ā· November 14, 2018 Ā· 24 comments

There was the sad news today of a mother of 5 being killed by a crossbow. At first I thought it was a local British Pakistani affair.

However it seems this was a bit of a twist as seen below. The lady who passed away was a Hindu lady who converted to Islam to marry her second husband (she had three kids with each husband and her last child was delivered off her dead body).

It’s obviously true that if it had been the other way around the “Muslim” angle would have been hyped up.

London(istan)

X.T.M Ā· November 12, 2018 Ā· 10 comments

I don’t have much to add to this. I do notice however that in the Shires (which are still very English); the English are much more guarded about the “demographic transformation.”

It’s almost like a silent invasion (the Home Counties have changed irreversibly in a generation) and even though the terminology is somewhat loaded, the English are unused to being a minority in their own country (understandably so).

Scotland is still demographically very white British and accordingly their main animus remains with the English as opposed to immigrants (who they want).

What is interesting however (and Razib touched on this in our podcast) South Asians almost always perceive themselves to be a minority. India is so diverse that no one caste dominates and in Pakistan the birdaderi clan caste identity is important in parts of the Punjab.

So in a way South Asians haven’t internalised homogeneity as Europeans have done in the past few centuries (Treaty of Westphalia for Germany, Treaty of Versailles for the East).

Brown Pundits