Category: X.T.M

Since BP in general lacks positively-inclined Pak-nuanced voices; I thought this was an important comment to highlight.

There was more than Jinnah involved in the ‘Pakistan Movement’ even if it was a one man show when it came to actual negotiations with the British.

Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani was instrumental in mass mobilization (using Islam khatray mein heh! naturally) and countering Congress’s anti-Jinnah propaganda campaign orchestrated by Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani of the JUH. This was the so called Muttahida Qaumiat movement that held that Jinnah and Aligarh Islamic Modernism was more dangerous than an independent India dominated by the Hindus.

In a nutshell, the insurmountable problem was simply this. Jinnah and some others (non-caste Hindus) wanted absolute safeguards for minorities before independence; Congress and caste-Hindus wanted independence first and then would decide whatever safeguards the minorities would get. As a part of this, Jinnah and others wanted a weak Centre and power devolution to the provinces/groupings while Congress (Nehru and Patel but not Gandhi, who was a hopeless romantic when it came to actual politics anyway) wanted a strong Centre and the provinces to have whatever powers the Centre didn’t want.

If you look at the Cabinet Mission Plan, that is EXACTLY what is being offered: a weak Centre. Of course Congress rejected it and Jinnah embraced it.

What must always be remembered is that the Pakistan Movement meant many different things to many different people.

His accent is obviously spot on; the fact that he’s Australian and has an American accent is a good example.

I find the Coloniser privilege in this video to be a bit OTT. Imagine if it was a black man speaking perfect Hindustani; there’d really be no interest. All a white man has to do is master the accent and then he can pass off as Kashmiri Brahmin; one of the “highest” stratas in Indian society.

It’s interesting that with Prince Harry marrying Meghan Markle; British society is really going the other way. The Royal Family, which is emblematic of privilege, is now connecting across the races and generations towards a new identity. It may very well be that the King George’s future Royal Cousins wouldn’t even be able to pass for Kashmiri Brahmins (they would be upto 25% Afram so who knows what they’d look like).

How many Desi parents would accept Meghan Markle for a Bahu?

Tomorrow is the Royal Wedding and the rumour is that Priyanka Chopra may be a bridesmaid, which would be huge.

At any rate on our Pakistani Literati group this was circulated around and I found the initial bit about Quaid e Azam (personally using Jinnah is like using Holy Prophet without the PBUH; there is a sliver of me that is a parochial Paki) about wanting to be an actor is fascinating.

I find the trope of QeA not wanting Partition to be a tiring; then why didn’t the Master Negotiator back down from his demands if he found them so unreasonable. If QeA and his ilk hadn’t messed it up; the HM the Queen’s Bahu would have probably been a desi and Harry would have been short for Harinder!

How Pakistan ended up trapping Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Jinnah’s close friend Kanji Dwarkadas agreed that Jinnah was not in earnest in his demand for Pakistan. After a 90-minute talk with Jinnah on August 28, 1942, Kanji wrote: “Jinnah was not thinking in terms of Pakistan. Nor did he think of becoming the head of a new state of Pakistan. In fact, Jinnah never imagined that Pakistan would ever come into being.”

When Kanji asked Jinnah about Pakistan, the latter replied: “My dear Kanji, one gesture, one friendly gesture was all that I was asking for and it was not forthcoming from the Congress. If the Congress would make this gesture, the whole problem would not be difficult to solve.”

Feeling trapped into accepting a Pakistan he had no intention of creating, Jinnah was yet too proud to call it off. Instead, he put up a brave front, as he told a Hindu friend in Karachi, Hashoo Kewal Ramani, an industrialist: “Look here, I never wanted this damn Partition! It was forced upon me by Sardar Patel. And now they want me to eat humble pie and raise my hands in defeat.”

The Quaid-i-Azam was the role of a lifetime that Jinnah found hard to turn down. But once he took on and played the part so convincingly, the “mad mullahs and extremists”, as Jinnah disdainfully called them, made sure he would never slip out of it again, keeping him a “virtual prisoner in his palace” and censoring all lines that went contrary to the script they had in mind.

My title is of course provocative but I was reading the results in Karnataka that the Dalit vote bank is now firmly backing the BJP.

If the BJP is able to unite the Hindu bloc (and Modi seems the right leader for it) well then it’s really going to become an unstoppable juggernaut (which I believe is a Sanskrit word).

Bollywood of course remains a bastion of liberalism but I am increasingly sympathetic to the Hindutva view as to why India must bear the costs of secularism.

Firstly the idea of celebrating all holidays is simply ridiculous; why does an 80% Hindu country need days off for Eid or Christmas.

Only the BJP have the willpower to smash the caste system to smithereens, which frankly has been the reason why India has been so divided and vulnerable to invasions the past millennia.

There is no doubt that the biggest influencers on the BJP has been the terrifying cohesiveness of the Muslim community (people rant on about caste in South Asian Muslims but nothing can compare to power of creed) and Pakistan.

If the upshot of Hindutva is to abolish the hierarchy of castes then I guess that can only be a good thing I guess? I’m just speculating out here in an idle academic matter since I’m more upset about the depiction of Desis in Deadpool than Elections in the Old a World.

Has anyone seen Raazi or planning to do so? I’ll share my thoughts later on but for now I’m excerpting the Deccan Chronicle.

Does anyone at BP actually watch Bollywood or follow South Asia pop culture?

The two-nation theory has had far too many ramifications than the leaders would ever have imagined. For over 60 years, both India and Pakistan have remained sworn enemies despite them sharing history and having the commonalities that their people would not find anywhere else in the world. Meghna Gulzar’s Raazi, based on Harinder Sikka’s book Calling Sehmat, gives us a taut espionage thriller that doesn’t take sides, although in many ways Pakistan’s intelligence seems to be failing and the officers made to look gullible. But what Gulzar emphasises most on is citizens of both sides of the border displaying their own brand of patriotism that indicates loyalty to their nation. In turbulent times like the one we are all going through now, when one word (or, a portrait!) of praise of the enemy camp leader could trigger a belligerent reaction from both sides, her standpoint is extremely relevant. She also manages to weave many humane and emotive characteristics of real men and women into the narrative that may border on the unlikelihood of the very premise itself, but never strays into jingoistic flavour.

Yeah, yeah, we all recognize the lady on the right. But, while most people would be able to guess that the woman on the left is Isabelle Kaif, if you saw her alone, we bet you wouldn’t have been able to. But right now, we’re going to make sure you never forget her.

There was a rumour spread around that Katrina Kaif was in fact fully English and that Kaif was a made up Kashmiri name.

Katrina is with her half sister Isabelle Turcquotte, who is fully English (they share the same mother). The difference is as clear as between night and day (no pun intended).

Isabelle won’t make it in Bollywood since of course the Desi ideal doesn’t map exactly onto the Western aesthetic. She screams foreigner in a way KK 1, KK 2 (Kalki Koechlin) and Sonia Gandhi do not..

Katrina Kaif has a bit of that Kim Kardashian exotic ness (I can’t believe I just wrote that).

I have read 3 articles/posts in the the past 2 weeks of woke white men decrying their “privilege.” It was in the most random of places; the first was Instagram (the artist), the second was a week or so later when I was messing around with Medium (the techie) and the third today was in a London magazine (the editor’s piece).

One is a famous artist, the other is an editor of a magazine and the final is a tech millionaire.

I have a pretty solid bullshit detector and these statements of guilt just set it off.

The hypocrisy in our public discourse has now become so intense that the privileged are learning how to twist it in ever more imaginative ways.

Like all of us I was born with an array of advantages and disadvantages. I recognise I’m Munafiq (a hypocrite) and I contain a ton of contradictions. I won’t make public statement feeling guilty about my privileges, which is simply a convoluted way to show off.

If I really felt bad about my privilege I would resign from my job and give it to the underprivileged. The fact that I don’t do that means I’m pretty ambivalent about my “privilege” (whatever it is) and I should stfu about it.

It’s ok to show, I do it too, but it’s in poor taste to show off and be morally sanctimonious about it.

Only the truly great are truly humble; Shah Rukh and Prince William have no need to show off because they are the Kings of East & West..

Vidhi & I were having a discussion whether Anand Piramal (Mukesh’s future son-in-law) was a Sindhi. We made the observation that while there are many Sindhi millionaires there just aren’t as many billionaires.

Sindhis are a “fast community”; they love to spend what they have. It might be because they are rootless cosmopolitans but that’s not the thrust of the post.

The peculiar pedigree of the business class

India’s particular nexus of politicians, cricketers, Bollywood and billionaire industrialists is creating an elite that’s unlike any other in the world. The American elite seems much more segregated (Zuck didn’t marry an actress) since it’s also divided into different cities (Manhattan, LA, SF etc).

Bombay is becoming a billionaires playground and all eyes on it as flit from funeral to wedding (within the same family – Anand Ahuja seems a fascinating character and an intriguing choice for Sonam Kapoor).

At Brown Pundits; the three main focuses are:

(1) India-Pak

(2) Hindu/Muslim

(3) Arya/Dravid

I would if there was a Black Pundits (or white or Yellow or Red) what the main topics would be. I think that much as the Hindu-Muslim debate defines the Brown identity; I imagine the Black-White dichotomy does so for those two races.

For Olive Pundits it would most likely be the Israel-Palestine issue (Arab & Jews etc). I can’t for the life of me know what Yellow Pundits would be about; in their case their entire intellectual focus isn’t random intellectualising but simply how to get ahead.

Maybe Brown Pundit’s propensity to discuss rather irrelevant minutiae is a relic of those ancient Brahmins (or Islamic jurists) discoursing on the trivial points of the Vedas. This was of course Allama Iqbal’s point as to why Hinduism survived but Zoroastrianism could not; the Vedas are a complete set of doctrine exhaustively discussed and understood among their adherents. The idle theorising provided an intellectual resilience to foreign domination of a millennia whereas Zoroastrian magi probably couldn’t mount a defence against empowered Islamic clergy, jurists and philosophers (especially after Caliph Omar’s depredations).