Author: X.T.M

White people are not gods, they bleed: Razib makes important points about class and race.

In contrast, even South Asians who grow up poor in the United States, usually have an ancestral class background which is somewhat elite. While black Americans and South Asians may share common physical features as dark-skinned people of color, most black Americans descend from slaves, while most South Asian Americans are more likely to either be the scions of a genuinely elite family or a prosperous lineage from a rural backwater. If you buy Greg Clark’s argument in The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility, then you know that he makes the case that social status is highly heritable when you look across many generations, as opposed to focusing on single generation correlations.

The Universal Law that differentiates an Immigrant from an Expat. An Immigrant goes one social class lower when moving to a new country and an Expat goes one social class higher upon moving to a new country.

So an office worker in the US will be an office manager in Uganda. An office manager from South Asia won’t hold the same position upon emigrating to the US because the cultural adjustment will have to take place (unless it’s Facebook or Googles which is essentially Indian).

At BP our world is very narrowed back to the Desh but Diaspora issues are extraordinarily important. Race intersects with class and the non-Muslim Asian minority is rapidly ascending the ranks. Even among the Muslims one can distinguish certain sub-ethnicites (Mirpuri, Sylethi) as being the more backward variants.

As a final thought privilege can have a deadening effect on the soul. When I contrast myself to my white friends of a similar background; I notice the speed, grit and alacrity which I have is a gift of my immigrant background. The 9-5 paradigm and pub after work paradigm simply does not apply to my life and that’s a big asset. I’m constantly “on” all the time as opposed to alot of my white friends who seem addicted to leisure..

Mind you I don’t know if it’s a good thing that I don’t have an off button.

Other Links: Continue reading Short Thoughts –

How ‘ministerial flop’ became favourite to succeed Theresa May as PM

It’s an interesting article about Sajid Javed and the fact that he is the favorite to succeed TM as PM.

Of course I’m dismissing the hype but the battle between the sons of the Pakistani Bus Drivers is going to be an interesting feature in British Politics. Even though my politics are quite Tory I’m quite sympathetic to Sadiq Khan as I find him more “authentic” than Sajid Javid.

I am of course at risk of hypocrisy because I’m suspect of assimilation while I welcome integration.

As an aside both Sadiq Khan and Sajid Javed were favourites of the Chancellors, Brown and Osborne. Sajid Javed was arm-twisted by David Cameron and George Osborne into supporting the Remain while he was a Eurosceptic but they guilted him into the fact that he owed his political career to them. Mind you Sajid Javed’s last paycheck in the private sector was apparently £3mn and he is self-made (unlike most Tory Politicians) so he’s probably talented than most but there is this earnestness to fit in that is very typical of coloured Tories (to be whiter than white).

They deeply relied on the patronage of wily white men to get through the party and the dramatic ethnic shifts we are seeing in the West must seem like something out of the Roman Empire.

I do remember that there were an astonishing high number of Pakistanis who were interested in politics (both parties). It does make sense Pakistani culture is very extroverted, loves to network and we are usually able to do it without drinking (heavily). Not drinking in a culture drenched in alcohol has distinct advantages..

Lawyer Asama Javed is ‘fixer for forced marriage’

The video in the link is 5 minutes long and worth seeing. This is pretty shocking since the lawyer, Asma Javed, is (and I’m excerpting):

On the surface Asma Javed 44, appears to be an upstanding member of her community, a political career with the Labour Party, now a partner in a law firm, a governor at a local primary school and on the fostering panel at Bradford Council. Yet her ‘marital advice’ exposes a complete disregard for basic human rights and utter contempt for British values.

What struck me is that Ms. Javed is obviously British born & bred since she easily slips into the Bradistani patois. But her Punjabi/Mirpuri is at native levels; this wasn’t supposed to happen after so many generations in the UK.

Since I’m a BritPak I’m quite the integrationist but in this case something’s got to give.  My thoughts on integration versus assimilation are mainly concerned with High Culture; even though I can understand Shakespeare and actually like it, I’ll ultimately still identify with Ferdowsi & Ghalib (probably the two poster boys for Turanistan)

The Augean Stables that is the British Muslim community needs to be cleansed. This is not a “Pakistani” issue but a Muslim one as we can see in this bit of news as well. Teenager jailed for life over British Museum bomb plot. When did Muslim culture in Europe become so degenerate?

I learnt about the Fields Medallist, Caucher Birkar, from a comment in BP. To make it even sweeter it so happens Mr. Birkar is from Cambridge so it’s a big win for our fair city in the ongoing competition with the States. Cambridge as a rule of thumb is the best STEM University this side of the Atlantic but MIT & Stanford make a good run for it’s money on a world-wide basis.

At any I immediately went into Internet Iranian mode and pronounced Mr. Birkar as the Second Iranian to win this in a row.. In my rush to proclaim a victory for Iranian I didn’t realise I was technically correct since the Fields Medal is every 4years and he follows into the footsteps of the late & great Maryam Mirzakhani. To my mind Mr. Birkar is British Iranian since Kurdistan is not a nation and even if it were it is still a part of Greater Iranian; as the children of Medians, Kurdish and Azeri identities, are simply subsets of Great Iran.

Vidhi noted that Mr. Venkatesh won the award too (it’s given every 4 years to 4 mathematicians under 40).

Interestingly enough he’s being described as an Aussie Prodigy even though he’s probably a TamBram of some sort (born in Delhi). Immigration doesn’t seem to be working out so badly for Australia:

Professor Venkatesh is just the second Australian to receive the Fields Medal. Dr Terence Tao won the award in 2006. Continue reading Iranian and Indian Fields Medallist; Mr. Birkar and Mr. Venkatesh

Footage: Indians save cow from middle of flooded river pic.twitter.com/EV5eB26opZ

— CGTN (@CGTNOfficial) August 1, 2018

• Hang those who gang raped pregnant goat in Haryana, says Actor John Abraham
• Who Is Imran Khan?
• Flying Naan: Allow yourself to be mesmerized by dough soaring through the sky, deftly caught and thrown by expert hands.
• Pakistani PMs & The Oxford Curse
• Three Hindu Candidates Elected to General Seats in Sindh

More to follow. I do agree with the hanging bit .. Suggestions for newsworthy items also welcome..

http://www.caravanmagazine.in/politics/assam-supreme-court-nrc-muslim-families-breaking-detention

I’m sharing a short link on what’s going on in Assam; frankly it’s pretty disgusting.

The NorthEast wing of India has seen much ethnic turbulence:

(1.) Nepalis expelled from Bhutan

(2.) Bengalis from Assam

(3.) Rohingyas from Burma

Nepalese and Bangladeshis seem to be the hyper fecund Indo-Aryan ethnicities overwhelming the Sino-Tibetan populations. It’s a continuation of a millennia old pattern of the “Aryanisation” of the East.

Even though I laid Bangladesh’s dramatic achievements in social metrics; I fear it’s developing a “Wakanda” attitude towards events in its neighbourhood.

It doesn’t go without saying that I’m much more sympathetic with the Party of the Widow than I am to the Party of the Daughter. I can’t also claim to know anything about Bangladeshi politics but just venturing my opinions, as I do.

It would also be interesting to see how Bangladeshis perceive:

(a) the Indo-Bangladesh relationship post 1971

(b) the Rohingya issue and whether Bangladesh has to do something about it

(c) the “illegal infiltrators” in the NorthEast that makes Indians go apoplectic..

It doesn’t make sense to me that Bangladesh, which is a nation explicitly founded on an indigenous Indic identity, seems to attract so much ire.

Indians seem to think that South Asia will become Muslim in generation and a half at best; faulty reading of demographic trends make for good politics as we have seen in the West as well.

I’ll end on something rather off-topic but what I saw on a Facebook by a Persian girl in South Africa.

She turns to her friend and says “we are the only two coloured people in the room.”

Her black friend shoots back “And you’re in camouflage.”

The point of this narrative is that identity is complex and intricate..

The National Register of Citizens (NRC) is a list of people who can prove they came to the state by 24 March 1971, a day before neighbouring Bangladesh declared independence.

India says the process is needed to identify illegal Bangladeshi migrants.

But it has sparked fears of a witch hunt against Assam’s ethnic minorities.

Assam register: Four million risk losing India citizenship

Activists say the NRC is now being used as a pretext for a two-pronged attack – by Hindu nationalists and Assamese hardliners – on the state’s Bengali community, a large portion of whom are Muslims.

Like Hasitun, many Bengalis live in the wetlands dotted along the Bramaputra river, moving around when water levels rise. Their paperwork, if it exists, is often inaccurate.

Officials claim illegal Bangladeshis are enmeshed in the Bengali population, often hiding in plain sight with forged papers – and a thorough examination of all documents is the only way to find them.

“They are openly threatening to get rid of Muslims, and what happened to the Rohingya in Myanmar, could happen to us here.”

This is wrong; very wrong. Magnanimity is an important part of any country’s policy and I do think that India is becoming far too draconian about the Muslim Question..

Pakistan’s future lies in solidarity with Turanistan .. I should write in to Imran Bhai and offer to be his foreign policy advisor.

I was going to write a long post about my thoughts on Janus-faced Pakistan and thankfully I deleted it. Instead I stumbled across these rather interesting clips. They should the distinction between popular culture in Pakistan (Punjabi) and the Urdu High Culture.

It’s an interesting clip where Talha can understand virtually all the Persian words but for the accent and Amir can’t get a single Punjabi word.

I found this clip as well and incidentally Amir’s success rate with understanding Urdu just shot up. It is simply unbelievable and wonderful. Also when Talha is in “Urdu” mode he is able to tackle with the Persian words far better than when he was in Punjabi mode because his frame of references shifts away from rustic.

Also as a quibble (I may have to write in) but Pakistani Punjabi (like all languages spoken cis-Radcliffe) is written in Nasta’liq. I do not know why Amir has “over-exoticised” the Punjabi script when he has made subsequent videos with Sikhs etc. Gotta love the Persians and their complete amnesia when it comes to the East; a bit like how Indian has forgotten her historic sway in South East Asia, where Hinduism is the fundamental sub-strata.

Important Links:

• The Impact of Persian Language on Indian Languages
• Uncommon tongue: Pakistan’s confusing move to Urdu

Rajasthan could be an honorary member. It’s interesting to note that the largest concentrations of Scythians aren’t in Europe, where they are best remembered, but in the border zones of the Subcontinent.

If memory serves me right (and I could be wrong here) but the Gujjars (the Punjabi tribe & Gujarat), the Kambojas, the Rajputs and Jats all have Scythic/Iranian associations. So even in India states such as Haryana, Punjab, Rajastan, Sindh and Gujarat have all seen these influxes.

The difference of course is that these Northwestern invaders had no rival ideology or high culture hence they accommodated themselves into the prevailing milieu with scant memory. I do remember though that the Rajput clans have complicated systems of lineage involving the sun and the moon though..

Lazy Sunday and I didn’t want to spam the BP Whatsapp Group so here goes (I may update as the day goes on):

• Like Most Americans, I Was Raised to Be A White Man
• Raza Rumi’s new book uses Pakistan’s culture to reveal a diverse, layered, contested country

• The Rise, Fall and Rise Again of Imran Khan, Pakistan’s Next Leader

• How White Is London?! Interesting that Nas (I follow him on Facebook) is an Israel-Palestinians Harvard Grad and uses Brown to define himself. I once wrote in one of my first posts in BP that there has always been an other category in the American imagination that was occupied by the Native Americans (Black, White & Red). America has space for three colours..
• I’m proud to say Pakistan probably has one of the best looking Leaders (on par with Croatia & Canada) in the world and it may have a female president. I’m extremely optics conscious.. Meet Pakistan’s playboy-turned-prime minister
• I always admonish Pakistanis who let down the side by not being aesthetic enough that’s why I’m probably anti-Hijab, I don’t like badly worn Hijabis. I do think however that Indian women are obviously the best-looking in the world. I admonished my niece yesterday when she thought that on average white women were better looking than Asian women; psychological colonisation.
• PTI MNA-elect decides not to take salary, other allowances. I’m rapidly winning over to the PTI side since they present the right image of Pakistan, young electable and non-corrupt chaps. I’ll of course be condemned as someone who supports authoritarian candidates and that’s probably true.
• Pakistan needs to work on its danger image and with our kin-nations Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan form that erogenous-erotic zone of danger, heady sensuality and restrictions. One interesting thing in the West has been that with the increase in sexual liberalism there is a correspondent decline in eroticism and increase in weird fetishes and an ever increasingly Cornucopia of sexual orientations.
• Pakistan is a split border territory our kin nations are both Afghanistan and Iran and the Stans however we are of course also tied to our kin nations of SAARC. We aren’t one or the other exactly. Afghanistan is a SAARC nation in the same way as Burma; it doesn’t speak an Indo-Aryan or Dravidian or Munda language which is a central requirement.
• I think the greatest leader in South Asian history happens to be Indira Gandhi since she neutralised the greatest threat to India for generations to come. Even though I’m partial to Pakistan (how can I not be since I’m partially Paki). I’m quite convinced that one of the avatars of Indira is Vidhi, probably the other is Priyanka..