Category: Open Thread

A few days ago, Graeme Wood wrote a piece in the Atlantic that has generated a lot of buzz (and controversy). In this article he noted that:
“The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam”
The article is well worth reading and it certainly does not label all Muslims as closet (or open) ISIS supporters, but it does emphasize that many of the actions of ISIS have support in classical Islamic texts (and not just in fringe Kharijite opinion). This has led to accusations of Islamophobia and critics have been quick to respond. A widely cited response in “Think Progress” quotes Graeme Wood’s own primary source (Princeton scholar Bernard Hakykel) as saying:
“I think that ISIS is a product of very contingent, contextual, historical factors. There is nothing predetermined in Islam that would lead to ISIS.”
Indeed. Who could possibly disagree with that? I dont think Graeme Wood disagrees. In fact, he explicitly says he does not. But that statement is a beginning, not a conclusion. What contingent factors and what historical events are important and which ones are a complete distraction from the issue at hand? 
Every commentator has his or her (implicit, occasionally explicit) “priors” that determine what gets attention and from what angle;  and a lot of confusion clearly comes from a failure to explain (or to grasp) the background assumptions of each analyst. I thought I would put together a post that outlines some of my own background assumptions and arguments in as simple a form as possible and see where it leads. So here, in no particular order, are some random comments about Islam, terrorism and ISIS that I hope will, at a minimum, help me put my own thoughts in order. Without further ado:
1. The early history of Islam is, among other things, the history of a remarkably successful imperium. Like any empire, it was created by conquest. The immediate successors of the prophet launched a war of conquest whose extent and rapidity matched that of the Mongols and the Alexandrian Greeks, and whose successful consolidation, long historical life, and development of an Arabized culture, far outshone the achievements of the Mongols or the Manchus (both of whom adopted the existing deeper rooted religions and cultures of their conquered people rather than impose or develop their own).
2. Islam, the religion we know today (the classical Islam of the four Sunni schools, as well as the various Shia sects) developed in the womb of the Arab empire. It provided a unifying ideology and a theological justification for that empire (and in the case of various Shia sects, varying degrees of resistance or revolt against that empire) but, at the very least, Islam and the nascent Arab empire grew and developed together; one was not the later product of the fully formed other. Being, in it’s classical form, the religion of a (very successful and impressive) imperialist project, it is not surprising that its”official” Sunni version has a military and supremacist feel to it. Classical Islam is not intolerant of all other religions (though it is in principle almost completely intolerant of pagans) but the rules and regulations of the four classical schools all agree on the superior status of Muslims and impose certain restrictions, disabilities and taxes on the followers of the “religions of the book” that they do tolerate. By the standards of contemporary European “Christendom”, many of these rules appear tolerant and broad-minded; and since Western intellectuals (leftists as much, or even more than rightists) are completely focused on European history and culture (and therefore,on the achievements and deficiencies of that culture), this relative tolerance is frequently remarked upon as a stellar feature of Islamicate civilization. But it should be noted that this degree of tolerance is quite intolerant compared to contemporary Chinese or Indian norms and is horrendously intolerant compared to post-enlightenment ideals and fashions. The imposition of Ottoman rules today would be most unwelcome even to post-Marxist intellectuals if they had to live under those rules. Of course, this does not mean they cannot speak highly of these norms as long as they themselves are a safe distance away from them, but such long-distance  approval is of academic interest (literally, academic) and not our concern for the purposes of this post.

3. Modern states and modern politics (not just all the complex debates about how power should be exercised, who exercises it, who decides who exercises it etc., but also the institutions and mechanisms that evolved to manage modern states and modern politics) mostly reached their current form in Europe. They did not arise from nothing. Many ancient strands grew and intersected to create these states and their political institutions. And there are surely things about this evolution that are contingent and would have been different if they had happened elsewhere. But there are also many features of modern life that are based on new and universally applicable discoveries about human psychology, human biology and human sociology. They have made possible new levels of organization and productivity and in a globalized world (and the Eurasian landmass has had some sort of exchange of ideas for millennia, but this process has accelerated now by orders of magnitude) it is impossible for any large population to ignore these advances and suvive unmolested by those willing to take advantage of these advances.
The modern world that has been created is not just one random “civilization” among many. It is the cutting edge of human knowledge and the human ability to apply that knowledge to good and evil ends. Whatever else it may be (and there is no shortage of people who feel it is too oppressive, too unfair, too fast, too anxiety-provoking, too inhuman, etc etc.) it is an extremely powerful and progressive culture. You can reject it, and countless people (including, it seems, many of the most privileged intellectuals of this very civilization) do reject many aspects of it. But it should also be noted that there are degrees of rejection. Most of the critics (but not all of them) are either critics-from-within, who only reject certain aspects of it, or non-serious critics whose wholesale contempt for the project is not matched by any equivalent personal commitment or serious consideration of alternatives. Most of them also seem unable to do without critical aspects of modernity. Aspects you cannot have without having far more of the rest than they seem to care for. To give two random examples, I have never met a multiculturalist liberal or leftist in the West (including those of Desi origin) who is willing to himself or herself live under the restrictive sexual morality and the community-centric balance of community vs individual rights characteristic of “traditional cultures’. And I have NEVER met an Islamist who did not want an air-force (you can work out for yourself all the other innovations and institutional mechanisms that would be needed in order to have a competitive indigenous air-force). 
In fact, forget traditional cultures, just look at Maoist China and the Khmer Rouge, both of whom explicitly rejected modern individualism and mere meritocracy and insisted they wanted to be “Red rather than Expert“. One ended up honoring the legacy of Liu Bocheng and Deng Xiaoping over Mao, the other ended up on the proverbial “dust heap of history”. There is a lesson (or several lessons) in those choices and their spectacular failure.
In short, the only people who can realistically stay outside of “our universal civilization” are either museum communities permitted to survive as quaint exemplars of bygone days (like the Amish) or VERY tiny communities that are so isolated and remote that they have escaped the maw of the Eurasian beast until now.  Our universal civilization does not have to be seen as positively as Naipaul famously saw it, but it still has to be seen for what it is, a gigantic human achievement and a work in progress; all criticism and resistance being included within it (dialectics anyone?) 
And it is important to note that this universal civilization is no longer exclusively European (and never was exclusively European for that matter). Soon, this universal civilization may be dominated by non-European people, a fact that Eurocentric PostMarxist intellectuals seem to have very great difficulty assimilating into their worldview. The institutions and ideas that developed in Europe (from earlier sources that came from all over Eurasia) in the last 400 years have been adopted and adapted already by several Asian nations (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan), with China not far behind and India set to follow. Muslims are not special enough to escape that fate. The only thing truly remarkable about the Muslim core region is the widespread desire to integrate huge elements of modern civilization while remaining medieval in terms of theology, law and politics. Of course we are not unique in this desire; there are Indians and Chinese and Japanese who “reject  modernity” as being too European, and who insist they have an alternative path. Whether they do or do not is to some extent a matter of semantics, but Muslims are not unique in claiming that “we are a fundamentally different civilization”. Where we are unique (for now) is only in our inability to generate a genuinely open debate on this topic; the tendency in the Islamicate core is for almost everyone in the public sphere to pay lip-service to delusional or formulaic and practically meaningless Islamist ideals and to avoid direct criticism of medieval laws and theology. This is unlike how it is routine for Indians to criticize Indian “fundamentalists” or Christians to criticize Christian ones. And for that we have to thank the blasphemy and apostasy memes more than any intrinsic unchangeability of Islamicate laws and theology.
4. But while Islamicate empires (the dominant form of political organization in the middle east and South Asia from the advent of Islam to the colonial era) insisted they were “Islamic” and used Islam (especially in the first 500 years) as the central justification for their expansionist ambitions, there was another sense in which these same empires had a near-total separation of mosque and state. All these empires operated as typical Eurasian empires and they were, in most administrative details, a straightforward evolution of previous imperial patterns in that region. Religion was part and parcel of the empires, but religious doctrine provided practically no guidance to the political process. The rulers used religion to justify their rule, but the battle-axe determined who got to rule and how. Some rulers attempted to conduct an inquisition and impose their favorite theology on their subjects, but most were content to get post-facto approval for their rule from the ulama (and the ulama were happy to oblige). Islamic theologians accepted practically ANY ruler as long the ruler said he was Muslim and continued to work for the expansion of the Islamic empire. ALL four schools of classical Sunni Islam insisted that the ruler should be obeyed and rebellion was unislamic. This did not stop people from rebelling, but once a rebellion succeeded, the ulama advised submission to whatever ambitious and capable prince had managed to kill his way to the top. An imaginary idealized Islamic state was discussed at times but had little to no connection with actual power politics.
5. It must also be kept in mind that Empires governed loosely and interfered little with the everyday religious rituals of the ruled, especially outside the urban core. The rulers were interested in collecting taxes and continuing to rule. Most of the ruled gave as little as possible in taxes and had as little as possible to do with their rulers. This is not a specifically Islamic pattern, but it was practically a universal feature of Islamicate empires. Muslim religious literature developed no serious political thought. Power politics was guided more by “Mirrors of princes” type literature and pre-Muslim (or not-specifically Muslim) traditions and not some detailed notion of “Islamic state”. There is really NO detailed “Islamic” blueprint for running a state. The so-called Islamic system of government is a modern myth. Every Islamicate empire down to the late Ottomans ruled in the name of Islam, but they did so using institutions and methods that were typically West-Asian/Central-Asian in origin, or were invented to solve a particular Islamicate problem, but had no direct or necessary connection with fundamental Islamic texts and traditions.  
6. After defeat at the hands of more capable imperialists and during the (relatively brief) colonial interlude, some people dug up the old stories of the rightly guided caliphs; It seems to me that early Islamicate fantasists (like Allama Iqbal in India) took it for granted that the everyday institutional reality of any “Islamic” state would, for the foreseeable future, be much closer to England than it was to Medina (witness for example his approval of the Grand Turkish assembly). Most Muslim leaders, like their Chinese or Japanese counterparts, were first and foremost interested in getting out from under the imperialist thumb. If they gave some thought to the form their states would take, their imagination ranged from Marxist Russian models to very poorly imagined Islamist utopias.  But over time, stories frequently repeated can take on a life of their own. Islamist parties want to create powerful, modern Islamic states. But the stories they were using were more Islamic than modern. The result is that every Islamist party is forever in danger of being hijacked by those espousing simple-minded and unrealistic notions of Shariah law. It turns out that pretending to have “our own unique genius” is much easier than actually having any genius that can get the job done. Modern ideas (fascism, the grand theatre of modern media manipulation, modern methods of guerilla war) are used to promote legal codes and theology whose relationship with these new institutions has not been worked out yet (and I see no problem with sticking my neck out and saying “will NOT be worked out satisfactorily by ANY contemporary Islamist movement). 
7. The MODE of failure may vary, but the failure of the Islamist political project in the next 20 years is inevitable. This is not because there can be no such project in principle, but because the project as it has actually developed in the 20th century is based on the twin illusions of  an “ideal Islamic state” and an existing alternative “Islamic political science”…neither of which actually existed in history. AFTER this failure, there can certainly be new ways of creating modern, workable institutions that have enough of an Islamic coloring to deserve the label “Islamist” while incorporating all (or most) of the new discoveries in the hard sciences as well as in economics, human psychology, politics, social organization, administrative institutions, mass communication and so on.

 Our religion problem by Babar Sattar in DAWN Pakistan. 
 Reforming the blasphemy laws, in many ways, an enlightened “Islam-based” initiative.  
 Razib Khan on “The Islamic State is right about some things”. 
 From Zenpundit Charles Cameron on Misquoting Mohammed 
“Brown is a Muslim, a professor at Georgetown, and author of Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World. His book Misquoting Muhammad — not his choice of title, btw — lays open the varieties of interpretive possibility in dealing with the Qur’an and ahadith with comprehensive scholarship and clarity. In light of the upsurge in interest in Islamic and Islamist religious teachings occasioned by Graeme Wood‘s recentAtlantic article, I asked Prof. Brown’s permission to reproduce here the section of his book dealing with abrogation and the rules of war.
Here then, with his permission, is an extract from Misquoting Muhammad. I hope it will prove of use both here and to others beyond the circle of Zenpundit readers. Spread the word!”
http://zenpundit.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Extract-from-Misquoting-Muhammad.pdf
An ISIS reading list. 
MUST read: Enough about Islam: Why religion is not the most useful way to understand ISIS
From a conservative Western perspective: The fantasy of an Islamic reformation. 

“Q 2:256, “There is no compulsion in religion . . .” (lā ikrāha fī l-dīni) has become the locus classicus for discussions of religious tolerance in Islam. Surprisingly enough, according to the “circumstances of revelation” (asbāb al-nuzūl) literature (see occasions of revelation), it was revealed in connection with the expulsion of the Jewish tribe of Banū l-Nadīr from Medina in 4⁄625 In the earliest works of exegesis (see exegesis of the Quran: classical and medieval), the verse is understood as an injunction (amr) to refrain from the forcible imposition of Islam, though there is no unanimity of opinion regarding the precise group of infidels to which the injunction had initially applied. Commentators who maintain that the verse was originally meant as applicable to all people consider it as abrogated (mansūkh) by q 9:5, q 9:29, or q 9:73 (see abrogation). Viewing it in this way is necessary in order to avoid the glaring contradiction between the idea of tolerance and the policies of early Islam which did not allow the existence of polytheism — or any other religion — in a major part of the Arabian peninsula. Those who think that the verse was intended, from the very beginning, only for the People of the Book, need not consider it as abrogated: though Islam did not allow the existence of any religion other than Islam in most of the peninsula, the purpose of the jihād (q.v.)against the People of the Book, according to q 9:29, is their submission and humiliation rather than their forcible conversion to Islam.[…]“
From Tolerance and Coercion in Islam 
“Both verses that are said to have abrogated Quran 2:256 speak about jihad. It can be inferred from this that the commentators who consider Quran 2:256 as abrogated perceive jihad as contradicting the idea of religious freedom. While it is true that religious differences are mentioned in both Quran 9:29 and 9:73 as the reason because of which the Muslims were commanded to wage war, none of them envisages the forcible conversion of the vanquished enemy. Quran 9:29 defines the purpose of the war as the imposition of the jizya on the People of the Book and their humiliation, while Quran 9:73 speaks only about the punishment awaiting the infidels and the hypocrites in the hereafter, and leaves the earthly purpose of the war undefined. Jihad and religious freedom are not mutually exclusive by necessity; religious freedom could be granted to the non-Muslims after their defeat, and commentators who maintain that Quran 2:256 was not abrogated freely avail themselves of this exegetical possibility with regard to theJews, the Christians and the Zoroastrians. However, the commentators who belong to the other exegetical trend do not find it advisable to think along these lines, and find it necessary to insist on the abrogation of Quran 2:256 in order to resolve the seeming contradiction between this verse and the numerous verses enjoining jihad. p. 102-3t al-_arab). Despite the apparent meaning of q 2:256, Islamic law allowed coercion of certain groups into Islam. Numerous traditionists and jurisprudents ( fuqahā_) allow coercing female polytheists and Zoroastrians (see magians) who fall into captivity to become Muslims — otherwise sexual relations with them would not be permissible (cf. q 2:221; see sex and sexuality; marriage and divorce). Similarly, forcible conversion of non-Muslim children was also allowed by numerous jurists in certain circumstances, especially if the children were taken captive (see captives) or found without their parents or if one of their parents embraced Islam. It was also the common practice to insist on the conversion of the Manichaeans, who were never awarded the status of ahl al-dhimma. Another group against whom religious coercion may be practiced are apostates from Islam (see apostasy). As a rule, classical Muslim law demands that apostatesbe asked to repent and be put to death if they refuse.”
The pact of Umar 
“In the name of Allah, the merciful Benefactor! This is the assurance granted to the inhabitants of Aelia by the servant of God, ‘Umar, the commander of the Believers. He grants them safety for their persons, their goods, churches, crosses – be they in good or bad condition – and their worship in general. Their churches shall neither be turned over to dwellings nor pulled down; they and their dependents shall not be put to any prejudice and thus shall it fare with their crosses and goods. No constraint shall be imposed upon them in matters of religion and no one among them shall be harmed. No Jew shall be authorised to live in Aelia with them. The inhabitants of Aelia must pay the gizya in the same way as the inhabitants of other towns. It is for them to expel from their cities Roums (Byzantians) and outlaws. Those of the latter who leave shall be granted safe conduct… Those who would stay shall be authorised to, on condition that they pay the same gizya as the inhabitants of Aelia. Those of the inhabitants of Aelia who wish to leave with the Roums, to carry away their goods, abandon their churches and Crosses, shall likewise have their own safe conduct, for themselves and for their Crosses. Rural dwellers (ahl ‘I-ard) who were already in the town before the murder of such a one, may stay and pay the gizya by the same title as the people of Aelia, or if they prefer they may leave with the Roums or return to their families. Nothing shall be exacted of them.
Witnesses: Khaledb.A1-Walid, ‘Amrb.A1-Alp, ‘Abdar-Rahmanb. ‘Awf Muawiya b. Abi Sufyan, who wrote these words, here, In the year 15 (33).
Winston King states in the Encyclopaedia of Religion, 2nd Ed., Vol. 11
“Many practical and conceptual difficulties arise when one attempts to apply such a dichotomous pattern [ sacred / profane ] across the board to all cultures. In primitive societies, for instance, what the West calls religious is such an integral part of the total ongoing way of life that it is never experienced or thought of as something separable or narrowly distinguishable from the rest of the pattern. Or if the dichotomy is applied to that multifaceted entity called Hinduism, it seems that almost everything can be and is given a religious significance by some sect. Indeed, in a real sense everything that is is divine; existence per se appears to be sacred. It is only that the ultimately real manifests itself in a multitude of ways—in the set-apart and the ordinary, in god and so-called devil, in saint and sinner. The real is apprehended at many levels in accordance with the individual’s capacity.” p.7692, 
Paul Radin, Primitive Religion: Its Nature and Origin in connexion with early societies”Where there is little trace of a centralized authority, there we encounter no true priests, and religious phenomena remain essentially unanalysed and unorganized. Magic and simple coercive rites rule supreme”.p.21
Carl Schmitt in Political Theology,
“All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularised theological concepts‟ (p. 36)
or again in The Concept of the Political that
“The juridic [sic] formulas of the omnipotence of the state are, in fact, only superficial secularisations of theological formulas of the omnipotence of God‟ (p. 42).










 

Having used Islam to separate themselves from their Hindu and Sikh neighbors, the ruling Pakistani elite might occasionally use it to strengthen the spirit of Jihad in Kashmir or carry out other nation-building projects, but they rarely saw it as a potential problem. When the “objectives resolution” was passed to impose an “Islamic” color on Pakistan’s future constitution (“Sovereignty over the entire universe belongs to Allah Almighty alone and the authority which He has delegated to the state of Pakistan, through its people for being exercised within the limits prescribed by Him is a sacred trust.”) only one Muslim member voted against it (that one rebel being the left-wing Mian Ifikharuddin). But it would be wrong to imagine that ALL those who voted for the objectives resolution wanted shariah law in Pakistan. Most of them probably imagined some mildly Islamicate laws but having grown up as members of the pro-British North Indian elite in British-ruled India, they took it for granted that most laws and the basic administrative structure of Pakistan would remain British-colonial, with some harmless Islamic color being added where needed. Most of the push for sharia law came mullahs and from neo-fascist Islamists of the Jamat e Islami and neither group was strongly represented in the ruling elite. Most of these mullahs, as well as the Jamat e Islami, had strongly opposed Jinnah’s project on the logical grounds that no one as ignorant of Islam as Jinnah could possibly create an Islamic state. But they soon realized that this pork-eating, whisky drinking Shia had created the perfect laboratory for their Islamist project and they were quick to move in and try to take ownership.

Jinnah and some of the other Westernized Muslims in the Muslim League (like their later descendant Imran Khan) do seem to have had the vague notion that a true Islamic state was a sort of social-democratic welfare state that was first introduced into the world by the Caliph Omar and then taken by the Swedes to Europe (see here for details regarding this belief). Some others thought Pakistan would be a secular Westminster- style democracy, but one dominated by Muslims rather than Hindus (to which they added the common belief that Muslims are “inherently democratic” while Hindus are “caste-ridden”, an ahistorical belief shared by many Western-educated Hindu liberals btw).

But the mullahs knew better. An Islamic state must have Islamic laws. And these laws are not going to be created de novo by some Westernized Muslims impressed by Scandinavian Social Democracy; they already exist. They were developed over hundreds of years, mostly between the 8th and 12th centuries CE. And they are serious business. Very deep questions of legitimacy, authority and sources were debated by the people who created those laws. Part of the Shia-Sunni dispute has to do with exactly these questions of authority and legitimacy. As long as a state is British or Indian or ethno-nationalist, these debates are mostly history; if and when there is an Islamic renaissance these debates will be part of the historical tradition from which this rennaissance will build it’s new enlightenment. When that happens there will no doubt be people who will cite these 10th century laws as “the basis of our modern Islamic civilization” the same way some people insist the ten commandments are the basis of all Western laws, but that rennaissance and that level of development has yet to occur in any Islamic country. Outside of Saudi Arabia, what we have right now is Western/colonial legal codes and state institutions with a smattering of “sharia punishments” thrown in for effect. But if you have created a state with no real basis except Islamic solidarity it doesn’t take long to start wondering how and when the state will actually become Islamic. And once you start down that path, you have to specify which Islamic law? Or you have to do the hard work of inventing a whole new set. The “new set” option is a step too far for the limited intellectual resources available to the Pakistani elite (and involves fighting past the apostasy and blasphemy roadblocks), so we are back to arguing about which school of classical Islam to follow.

General Zia, who understood these matters better than the average Pakistani liberal, took his theology seriously. He favored hardcore Sunni schools of thought, though his exact allegiances are by no means clear. He also understood the importance of Saudi Arabia as a source of cash, and that may have played a role in his decisions (e.g.a senior official in his govt later claimed that he introduced the Islamic law of cutting off the hands of thieves purely in order to get short-term Saudi favor). In any case, he introduced a series of “Islamic laws” one of which made it compulsory for all Muslims to pay Zakat (poor tax) to the state. Shia jurisprudence regarded this as a personal matter rather than a state matter and a very large number of Shias organized to demand that they be excluded from this law. This Shia movement was given some support by Iran (a message from Khomeini was read out to the largest gathering in Islamabad), a fact that has allowed some apologists to claim that all later problems are part of some sort of proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia (a claim that is thoroughly debunked here). While the Shias won that round and were exempted from Zakat, a line had been drawn that has continued to become darker and bloodier with time.

At ground level a lot of this was not due to any single organized conspiracy but involved the confluence of several factors: Islamization put the question of “whose Islam” on the table; Zia’s personal leanings led to support for anti-Shia factions; Saudi Arabia inserted Wahabi-Salafi propaganda into the mix; The Shia response to the Zakat law and open (even if mostly symbolic) support from Iran helped opponents to label them Iranian agents; and modernization and modern education themselves led to a preference for modern (and fascist) versions of Islam in preference to Indian folk Islam with its “superstitious”, it’s heavy Indian coloring of  rituals and folk beliefs and it’s striking multicultural colorfulness.

Newly rich Saudi and Gulf individuals wished to promote “true Islam” in Pakistan. Many individuals in Pakistan wished to be paid by Gulf and Saudi millionaires to do the same. While the actual madrassa cannon-fodder came mostly from poor families, the policy the promoted the same came from middle class military officers and their civilian collaborators. Modern education and economics had prepared the minds of many middle class Pakistanis (including many whose families were traditionally Barelvi Sunni) to accept Maudoodi-type “back-to-basics” modern Islamism. Just like traditional folk Hinduism was rejected by Arya Samajis and other Hindu reformers, educated middle class Muslims in Pakistan were ready to reject folk Islam and strive for modernized purity. Thus,in predominantly Barelvi Pakistan, the majority of the new madrassas set up all over the country and paid for by Gulf money turned out to be hardline Deobandi, Ahle hadith and Wahhabi in sectarian orientation.

It is worth repeating that the Anti-Shia polemic was not paramount in the minds of many of the geniuses who promoted these policies. In fact, many in the Pakistani middle class still have no clear idea of where the anti-Shia polemic is coming from. It was not part of our education. While Shias were a minority sect, their version of Karbala and the martyrdom of Husain was widely accepted and reverence for Ali and the house of Ali was part of most Sufi orders. Shia symbolism had spread well beyond the Shias and become part of the cultural heritage of educated Sunnis in South Asia (or maybe, as Jaun Elya points out here, a lot of what is now typically “Shia” had it’s origin within Sunnis, things not necessarily always being divided in exactly the same boxes in which they are divided today). Certainly there were Ahle hadith and Wahhabi mullahs in Pakistan who were frankly anti-Shia, but even they tended to stay away from any direct criticism of Imam Hussein and his family. That this kind of reverence is not a universal feature of the Muslim word is not something that is even vaguely known to most Pakistani or Indian middle class Sunnis. That in Indonesia and Malaysia there is practically no sense of Moharram as a month of universal mourning is a surprise; that the Saudi Wahhabis have a well-developed anti-Shia polemic that brands the Shias as heretics, Jewvish agents and frank enemies of Islam was poorly understood.

But the fact is the Saudi Wahhabis and their fellow travelers DO have such a story. When I first heard the Saudi version (from a Pakistani doctor who had converted to Saudi Islam and ran a “study circle” in our residential camp in Saudi Arabia) it was a bit of a shock. It took a while for me to realize that his version of history was completely mainstream in Saudi Arabia. In this version, Islam (basically a military conquest enterprise from day one) was spreading rapidly on its way to conquer the world, until a Jew named Ibne Saba helped to create a fitna (the first civil war) that sabotaged this first attempt at world conquest. This fitna is now known as the Shia sect and they have been sabotaging Islam ever since. I paraphrase of course, but this is not too far from what any pious Saudi or Gulf millionaire believes. It is therefore no surprise that they spend good money to teach Pakistanis these “truths” and some of them go on to support killers who take the next step and start physically eliminating Shias.

A second and only locally important economic factor was the fact that there were some prominent Shia landlords and power-brokers in Southern Punjab. Anti-Shia polemics combined in those parts with what the Marxists gleefully call “class issues” to give it something of the color of a hardline Sunni revolt against the local Shia elite in these areas.

But the third and most critical component of this perfect storm was the state policy of Jihad or “strategic depth”. The Afghan Jihad that effectively destroyed Afghanistan may have been a CIA project, but from day one it was supported and then hijacked by local actors who had priorities of their own. Cynical Saudis saw it as a way to send away religious zealots to “jihad camp”; Pious Saudis saw it as a way to spread true Islam to the benighted heathens; and GHQ saw it as a golden opportunity to get “strategic depth” in Afghanistan, to be translated later into conquest of Kashmir and projection of power (perhaps even an empire!) in Central Asia.

As a result, the ISI got oodles of cash from the CIA and the Saudis (every American dollar was matched dollar for dollar by the Saudis) and had complete autonomy in who they handed it out to. They handed it out to the most hardline Islamist groups they could find. And the Saudis paid for the madrassas where hardline Islam was to be taught to future suicide bombers. That it included a healthy dose of anti-Shia propaganda was part of the package. Even today, many Pakistanis who have not been directly involved in jihad and anti-jihad have no idea of the kind of ideological poison that was being injected into Pakistan’s Madrassa and Jihad underworld starting in the 1980s and accelerating through the 1990s under state patronage; and continuing even as the state itself became at least partially ambivalent about the cause. One visit to this site and others like it should help to put things in perspective.

Very early on, some of the anti-Shia groups started targeting Shias within Pakistan. Jhang in central Punjab was an early battleground, as were Gilgit, Kohistan and Parachinar. Zia’s regime is known to have actively helped set up the Anjuman e Sipah Sahaba (ASS), the primary anti-Shia militant group, probably as a way of getting political leverage against uppity Shias. Like many other inventions of general Zia (MQM being the most famous) the puppets soon escaped from state control (while continuing to receive help and protection from factions within the state). Ultra-militant offshoots of the ASS (offshoot or deniable-militant-arm, take your pick) like the Lashkar e Jhangvi (LEJ) had launched open war on all Pakistani Shiites by the 1990s. The state made some intermitten efforts to rein them in (most notably in Nawaz Sharif’s second tenure) , but since the same militants were linked by common donors and patrons to other militants that were considered “good” by the state (as in Kashmir Jihadists, Taliban, etc.) and because their “legal” front organizations were friends of the Saudis and of the “good Jihad” factories, this crackdown was always ineffectual and remains so to this day.

The level of violence has steadily accelerated over time. To get an overview of the violence, see here. This has now reached the point where I personally know well-established Shia doctors who abandoned their life in Karachi and escaped to the US because someone across the hall was shot dead in broad daylight because of his sect. In 2012, over 300 Shias were killed or injured in attacks during the holy month of Moharram. Since 2001, nearly a thousand Shia Hazaras have been murdered in Quetta city and its environs and over 3000 injured. In events that evoke the horrors of partition and 1971, Shias were taken down from buses in Kohistan and identified either using their names (there are some typically Shia names, though overlap occurs) or the scars of self-flagellation many Shias have on their backs. They were then shot in cold blood. The term “Shia genocide” has been used and several op-eds have appeared in which prominent writers are asking where this will end.

Predictions:  So where will this end? Prediction is where the pundit rubber meets the road, so here goes:

1. The state will make something of an effort to stop this madness. Shias are still not seen as outsiders by most educated Pakistani Sunnis. When middle class Pakistanis say “this cannot be the work of a Muslim” they are being sincere, even if they are not being accurate.
But if the state makes a greater effort to rein in the most hardcore Sunni militants, it will be forced to confront the “good jihadis” who are frequently linked to the same networks. This confrontation will eventually happen, but between now and “eventually” lies much confusion and bloodshed.

2. The Jihadist community will feel the pressure and the division between those who are willing to suspend domestic operations and those who no longer feel ISI has the cause of Jihadist Islam at heart will sharpen. The second group will be targeted by the state and will respond with more indiscriminate anti-Shia attacks. Just as in Iraq, jihadist gangs will blow up random innocent Shias whenever they want to make a point of any kind. Things (purely in terms of numbers killed) will get much worse before they get better. As the state opts out of Jihad (a difficult process, but one that is almost inevitable, the alternatives being extremely unpleasant) the killings will greatly accelerate and will continue for many years before order is re-established. The worst is definitely yet to come. This will naturally mean an accelerating Shia brain drain, but given the numbers that are there, total emigration is not an option. Many will remain and some will undoubtedly become very prominent in the anti-terrorist effort (and some will, unfortunately, become special targets for that reason).

3. IF the state is unable to opt out of Jihadist policies (no more “good jihadis” in Kashmir and Afghanistan and “bad jihadis” within Pakistan) then what? I don’t think even the strategists who want this outcome have thought it through. The economic and political consequences will be horrendous and as conditions deteriorate the weak, corrupt, semi-democratic state will have to give way to a Sunni “purity coup”. Though this may briefly stabilize matters it will eventually end with terrible regional war and the likely breakup of Pakistan. . Since that is a choice that almost no one wants (not India, not the US, not China, though perhaps Afghanistan wouldn’t mind) there will surely be a great deal of multinational effort to prevent such an eventuality. If it does happen, the future may look very different from the recent past (btw, a little explanation of the scenario building in that last link is here).
Sadly, the Tariq Ali type overseas/Westernized-elite Left will play no sensible role in any of this. If we do (God forbid) get to the nationalist-Sunni-coup phase; Pankaj Mishra may find something positive in it (“strength” and the willingness to stand up against imperialism being a high priority for him) but events will not fit into that semi-positive framework for too long.

Addendum: A friend raised the objection that the state may well be trying it’s best. It is just not a very effective state,so they cannot stop the killers. I don’t think we can accept that argument. This is not what “trying your best” looks like and Pakistan in any case is not Nigeria. It is an order of magnitude more capable as a state. It can do much more it if wanted to. For example, in response to any terrorist movement one expects the state to launch a massive propaganda effort against them. All the PR resources of the state (and the resources of the Pakistani state are very potent in this case, see the PR around Kashmir, against Baloch separatism or even the anti-drone campaign that can be turned on or off as needed) are mobilized to identify and demonize the enemy. Has there ever been such an effort against the Lashkar e Jhangvi? much less against their legal fronts and fellow travelers? And in law enforcement, leads are pursued to the end, sympathizers are caught in the dragnet, people are given the message that it is unsafe to support the terrorist program. Has than happened anywhere in Pakistan?  Forget about a broad campaign, even in the case of specific attacks there is limited and very hazy information about the investigation and it’s findings. Who planned it? who carried it out? what was their motivation? who has been caught and who is still at large? in many cases, the local police may know a lot of these things a few months down the line, but how much gets communicated to the public? Since very little organized propaganda effort is mounted by the state, the field is open for every conspiracy theory under the sun.
This is not the best the state can do…

btw, the cartoons and the painting are the work of the highly talented Pakistani cartoonist and artist sabir nazar. http://pinterest.com/laiq/sabir-nazar-cartoons/

…

 …
A summons from the US Federal Court for the Southern District of New York…that sure rings a bell. The US Attorney for the Southern District is Preet Bharara, the cowboy lawyer who
(allegedly) ordered a top-to-bottom cavity search on Devyani
Khobragade. What is the chance that he and his marshals will NOT attempt to arrest
the “Hitler loving” Modi??  

Then again, if Hitler-praise counts as a global standard thought crime (GSTC), Madhav Sadashiv “Guruji” Golwalkar of the RSS has nothing on Haj Mohammed Effendi Amin el-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. The latter was not just a Fuhrer fan, he actually collaborated with the Third Reich (another collaborator/admirer was “Netaji” Subhas Chandra Bose, grand-uncle of Prof Sugata Bose of Harvard and a hero to millions of secular Bengalis).
…..
The Mufti’s people, the Palestinian nationalists and their brothers in the Ummah, in the internationalist Left and in the nationalist Right, recently marched in Germany while chanting “Hamas, Hamas…Jews to the gas.” This is most remarkable: a rainbow coalition expressing robust admiration for the Final Solution in its very place of origin. Hitler would be justly proud.

Now as it happens, the Hindu Nationalists also have their own “Hitler” list…Yamīn-ud-Dawla Abul-Qāsim Mahmūd ibn Sebüktegīn (Mahmud of Ghazni), Mu’izz al-Din Muhammad (of Ghor), and many others…..who continue to receive undiluted admiration amongst the Ummah (and in school textbooks) for their unyielding endeavors in infidel crushing. This is the fundamental pillar of the two nation theory: our Ghazis are their villains. Are some Hitlers then superior to other Hitlers? 
 …….
Taking a step back now to the good old days when Indian monks used to travel to the USA to preach the message of goodwill to all. The story of Narendra-I aka Narendra Nath Dutta aka Swami Vivekananda who visited the United States in 1892 as representative of the Hindus is relatively well known.

What is not as well known is the story of Virchand Raghavji Gandhi who represented Jainism in the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 (his statue is displayed in the Chicago Jain temple).
….

[ref. Wiki] Jain monk Acharya Vijayanandsuri, also known as Acharya Atmaram, had initially been invited to represent Jainism
at the Parliament, but as Jain monks do not travel overseas, could not
attend. He recommended Gandhi to go in his stead and serve as the
emissary for the religion. 
.
Atmaram and his disciple Vallabhsuri trained Gandhi for six months.  At the Parliament he said: 
“It is an astonishing fact that
foreigners have been constantly attacking India and in the face of all
this aggression the soul of India has stood vital and watchful. Her
conduct and religion are safe and the whole world looks at India with a
steady gaze.” 
….

With adequate qualifications one may still say of India today that “her conduct and religion are safe.” The Jains are of course at the top of the social, economic and political ladder: Amitbhai Anilchandra Shah is the first Jain President of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he famously won the “man of the match” award (by Modi) in the campaign to crush a 50 year old dynasty. Another high-flying Jain (and a bosom friend of Modi) is Gautam Adani.
….
A sharp 152% jump in his
wealth saw Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani break into the list of 10
richest Indians even as Mukesh Ambani retained the pole position,
according to a latest report….Adani blazed into the top league
riding on the runaway share prices of his companies in recent past,
pegging his wealth at Rs 44,000 crore, said Hurun Report, published by a
China-based luxury publishing and events group, tracking the uber rich.
……

It is also the case that with the advent of the second republic in May 2014, the world “looks at India with a steady gaze” (and so presumably does Preet Bharara). In light of this our best wishes (meant sincerely) to Narendra-II as he prepares to make his entry on to the world stage. It is on rare occasions that the Madison Square Garden is sold out…..certainly not for (brown) leaders.

Truth be told, this is a coming out party for the Hindu-Americans spear-headed by the majority Gujarati-American community. And as a wise american once said with great eloquence: “elections have consequences” and “I won” ….this is true in India as well. 

If you do not like the results (and we do not), then you still have a choice to fight for your rights (and for the votes of the people). But merely  invoking Hitler will not stop Hindus from electing Hindu nationalists. Indeed what all this drama-bazi does is to permit Hindutva-vadis to wear the victim mask while doing nothing for the actual victims.

It is clear (from the track record of the past ten years) that Modi cannot be defeated using law-fare. The Islamists have also tried guerilla war-fare with limited success– simply more victims have been created. The only way is to defeat the Hindutva-vadis through elections. That should not be too difficult- the BJP got only 31% of the national vote share (the NDA alliance as a whole got 40%). 

All that needs to be done is for a “secular alliance” to ensure that the balance 60% is not wasted through ego clashes. Indeed such a grand alliance (Congress + Nitish Kumar + Lalu Yadav) recently crushed the BJP in the Bihar by-polls. It will be hard work to achieve such unanimity on an all-India basis (not to mention, how to rule, once elected, with a sense of purpose). But this will be the only way.   
 
….
It is a rock ‘n’ roller’s dream to “sell out The Garden,” but for a
foreign politician to pack New York City’s most famous sports and
entertainment arena is another thing entirely.

…
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on his first trip to New York as leader
of the world’s most populous democracy, will draw perhaps the largest
crowd ever by a foreign leader on U.S. soil when he takes the stage on
Sunday in Madison Square Garden before a crowd forecast to total more
than 18,000 people.

…
Thousands more are expected to pack New York’s Times Square to watch
his address in Hindi on big screens as well as smaller viewing parties
around the country and on TV in India.

The Indian diaspora hopes this visit by a leader who was until
recently barred from the United States will signify India’s importance
not only on these shores but in the wider world too.

The event is being emceed by prominent members of the Indian American
community, Nina Davuluri, who has just relinquished her crown as Miss
America 2014, and TV journalist Hari Sreenivasan.

…
“Indian citizens and diaspora over the world are hopeful that this
(Modi) administration will cut bureaucracy and focus on people,” said
Dr. Dinesh Patel, chief of arthroscopic surgery at Massachusetts General
Hospital in Boston, who arrived in the United States more than 50 years
ago.

…
Patel, who says he was given an award for work in education by Modi, a
fellow Gujarati, added: “People are passionate to see the new leader.
Another Narendra is coming to this country to let the USA know what
India is about.”

…
The first Narendra was Swami Vivekananda, a 19th-century philosopher
and monk who propagated the Hindu faith in the United States. Modi often
cites a speech by Vivekananda, born Narendra Nath Datta, to the
Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, as a source of inspiration.

…
“Let us remember the words of Swami Vivekananda and dedicate
ourselves to furthering the cause of unity, brotherhood and world
peace,” Modi wrote Sept. 11 to his 6.5 million followers on Twitter. India’s economy, the third largest in Asia, has struggled to recover
from sub-par growth, shackled by layers of bureaucracy anathema to the
diaspora. Modi’s general election triumph in May was driven in large
part by his entrepreneurial mantra.

…
On the eve of his U.S. visit, tensions remain between the Washington and New Delhi over trade and spying. The 64-year-old former chief minister of Gujarat was denied a U.S.
visa in 2005 over sectarian rioting that killed more than 1,000 people,
mainly Muslims, three years before. Modi, who denies wrongdoing, has
been exonerated by a Supreme Court probe.

..
Washington was late to warm to Modi. Its ambassador to India only met
him in February, when opinion polls already put his nationalists on
course for a big election win.

   


India’s U.S. diaspora is a highly educated population of nearly 3.2
million, making up about 1 percent of the U.S. population, according to
latest U.S. Census Bureau data.

….
As a group, they are more likely to be hooked to the internet than
their fellow Americans, far more likely to have a college or
professional degree and twice as well off with an average household
income of more than $100,000.

…
“Indians are generally very ambitious and entrepreneurs,” said Mike
Narula, the founder, president and chief executive officer of Long
Island, New York-based Reliance Communications, a distributor of mobile
telecom devices and accessories.

…
Narula, who came to the United States 17 years ago, first working in
the garment industry, now has his own company with more than, 200
employees. He’s part of the host committee for Modi’s visit to
Washington, where the prime minister will meet with President Barack
Obama on Monday and Tuesday. “We attempted to do business in India. I hope Modi will look into
streamlining issues such as VAT, the role of FDI (foreign direct
investment) and find a way for American businesses to not have to go
through 19 red tape bureaucracies,” he said.

…
While Indian Americans are well represented in America’s professional
class, they are less visible in the military. Some 0.1 percent serve in
the armed forces compared to 0.4 percent of Americans as a whole. “The diaspora does very well on entrepreneurship, but not as much on
the physical sacrifices. It is not just enough to be a citizen and
taxpayer,” said Raj Bhandari, a 48 year old Mumbai-born banker from New
Jersey. “As a larger community I would like it to be more engaged on the
front lines.”

………………..

A day
before Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s landmark visit to the US, a human
rights group has obtained summons against him for his alleged role in
the 2002 Gujarat riots as state chief minister. New York based American Justice Centre (AJC) obtained the summons
from the US Federal Court for the Southern District of New York in a
suit filed with two survivors of what it called the “horrific and
organized violence of Gujarat 2002.”
…
Filed under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) and the Torture
Victim Protection Act (TVPA), the 28-page complaint charges Modi with
“committing crimes against humanity, extra-judicial killings, torture
and inflicting mental and physical trauma on the victims, mostly from
the Muslim community.”
…
AJC said it is providing legal support and advice to the
survivors in their effort to hold “Modi accountable for his complicity
in the violence.
…
“The survivors are suing Modi for the loss of lives and trauma in
their families, and caused emotional, financial and psychological
devastation in their lives.
“The Tort Case against Prime Minister Modi is an unequivocal
message to human rights abusers everywhere,” said John Bradley, an AJC
director.

…
“Time and place and the trappings of power will not be an impediment to justice.” The Alien Tort Claims Act, also known as Alien Tort Statute
(ATS), is a US federal law first adopted in 1789 that gives the federal
courts jurisdiction to hear lawsuits filed by US residents for acts
committed in violation of international law outside the US, AJC said.
…..

Link (1): in.reuters.com

Link (2): hindustantimes.com/us-rights-group-gets-court-summons-against-modi
…

regards

….
We are reminded here of Jurassic Park (the novel) where female dinosaurs had escaped from their habitat and had found a way to breed. Nature – it was famously said – will always find a way. And nature has found a way for creatures as immobile as snails to migrate from one continent to another by clinging on to the feet of birds.
…
In June 2000, Alan de Queiroz became curious about an enormous,
ragged-looking garter snake that lived on the tip of Baja California.
Like many other biologists of his generation, de Quieroz had been taught
that species traveled the Earth to new habitats on slowly drifting
continents.  
…
This snake had relatives on the other side of the Sea of
Cortéz on Mexico’s mainland, and de Queiroz assumed that this population
ended up on Baja 4 to 8 million years ago, when the peninsula split
from the mainland.

…
But using a new method based on genetic
sequencing to estimate when the two populations split, he found that it
had occurred in the past few hundred thousand years. In other words, one
or more pioneering garter snakes had probably floated across 120 miles
of open ocean.

…
As de Queiroz prepared to write up the surprising
results of his snake study, he discovered that the reptile was not an
outlier. Biologists were finding that even after continents drifted
apart, plants and animals somehow hopped between them.  
…
“Obviously, the
continents had moved — nobody was claiming that the theory of plate
tectonics was wrong — and obviously, they had carried species with
them,” he writes, “but somehow, these facts did not explain nearly as
much about the modern living world as we had thought.” Chance ocean
crossings did.

…
In his engaging new book, “The Monkey’s Voyage,”
de Queiroz makes the case that the vibrant and distinctive biological
communities we see today were created by organisms rafting across oceans
and soaring through the atmosphere. “The large number of these
colonizations tells us that, in the long history of this living world,
the miraculous has become the expected,” he writes.


To understand how contentious this notion is, de Queiroz takes us back
to the 1950s and ’60s, when a wealth of new information emerged about
continental drift. Geologists had long recognized that the coasts of
South America and Africa fit together like puzzle pieces and had
theorized that they were once a single landmass. 

But now measurements
from the ocean floor revealed several ridges, including one in the
middle of the Atlantic Ocean, where the sea floor was spreading before
the scientists’ eyes. These discoveries provided a clear mechanism for
how the continents creep along. Geologists determined that,
approximately 180 million years ago, there was an ancient uber-continent
called Gondwana, which sat on the equator and was composed of what are
now South America, Africa, Antarctica, India and Australia. 

Gondwana was also a revelation for evolutionary biologists. Its
break-up, they surmised, was probably etched in the history of life. For
instance, ostriches, emus and rheas, closely related birds found in
Africa, Australia and South America, became a textbook example of this
continental drift theory. Another famous example were southern beech
trees, which are found in South America, Australia and other smaller
pieces of Gondwana.

This theory was attractive because it was elegant and sensible, but,
as de Queiroz colorfully describes, its proponents became a little too
dogmatic about it. Léon Croizat, a self-trained botanist of French
heritage who lived in Venezuela, coined the phrase “Earth and life
evolve together” and believed that continental drift explained
everything about plant and animal distributions. To him, the idea that
plants or animals crossed oceans on their own was outrageous and
unscientific. 
…
He characterized Darwin as “congenitally not a thinker,”
in part because of Darwin’s suggestion that wolves may have reached the
Falkland Islands on icebergs. Croizat came in for criticism himself. An
eminent American paleontologist called him “a member of the lunatic
fringe.”

…
Indeed, there had always been evidence that, over the
long history of life on Earth, plants and animals made remarkable
journeys. Consider, for example, that young spiders are carried on the
wind by their silky threads and land on the decks of ships far from the
coastline. Freshwater snails cling to the feet of migrating birds. And
fishermen on the Caribbean island of Anguilla once watched a natural
raft of logs get washed onto shore with 15 green iguanas on it, a
species that had not previously existed there.

…
Proof of how
important these journeys are in evolutionary history finally arrived in
the late 1990s with genetic-dating studies, such as the one de Quieroz
conducted on his garter snakes. We now know that the evolutionary
history of ostriches, emus and rheas does not match the break-up of the
continents. Some scientists believe that their common ancestor could fly
and that they became flightless only after settling on their respective
continents. Among the other creatures de Queiroz considers are New
World monkeys and two other groups of mammals, which apparently rafted
to South America on a clump of earth. Today, these three groups
represent 73 percent of the land mammals living there.

…

Link: washingtonpost.com/monkeys-voyage-improbable-journeys-shaped-the-history-of-life-by-alan-de-queiroz

….

regards

…. 
None of the above excuses the utterly horrific conditions in which peasants continue to lead their lives. If we enjoy living in a liberal democracy (however flawed) and not suffer from armed revolutions the elites will need to share. Every man, woman and child must be guaranteed dignity of life (and labor). To take just one example, all communities (and local governments) should learn from the example set forward by the Sikhs and adopt a no beggar policy.

The days of dividing and misruling are mostly behind us, as the BJP has discovered in the recently held by-poll(s) shocker – losing 9-2 to Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh and 3-0 in Uttarakhand and 3-1 in Rajasthan to a Congress party which is supposedly dead and buried. We live in hope for a better tomorrow, but there will be many a (non-fictional) Nitai Das who need help now and are unable to wait.
…..
A third of the way through the half-mile walk from the landlord’s house
to his hut, Nitai Das’s feet begin to sway. Or maybe it is the head-spin
again. He sits down on the lifeless field he has to cross before he can
reach his hut. There isn’t a thread of shade anywhere. 
…
The May sun is
an unforgiving fire; it burns his blood dry. It also burns away any
lingering grain of hope that the monsoons will arrive in time to end
this third year of drought. The earth around him is beginning to fissure
and crack. His eyelids are heavy. He closes them for a while, then, as
sleep begins to take him, he pitches forward from his sitting position
and jolts awake. Absently, he fingers his great enemy, the soil, not
soil any more, but compacted dust. Even its memory of water has been
erased for ever, as if it has never been.

He has begged all morning outside the landlord’s house for one cup of
rice. His three children haven’t eaten for five days. Their last meal
had been a handful of hay stolen from the landlord’s cowshed and boiled
in the cloudy yellow water from the well. Even the well is running dry. 
…
For the past three years they have been eating once every five or six or
seven days. The last few times he had gone to beg had yielded nothing,
except abuse and forcible ejection from the grounds of the landlord’s
house. 
…
In the beginning, when he had first started to beg for food, they
shut and bolted all the doors and windows against him while he sat
outside the house, for hours and hours, day rolling into evening into
night, until they discovered his resilience and changed that tactic.
Today they had set their guards on him. One of them had brought his
stick down on Nitai’s back, his shoulders, his legs, while the other one
had joked, ‘Where are you going to hit this dog? He is nothing but
bones, we don’t even have to hit him. Blow on him and he’ll fall back.’

His wife is sitting outside their hut, waiting for him to return with
something, anything, to eat. She can hardly hold her head up. Even
before he starts taking shape from a dot on the horizon to the form of
her husband, she knows he is returning empty-handed. The children have
stopped looking up now when he comes back from the fields. They have
stopped crying with hunger, too.

The youngest, three years old, is a tiny, barely moving bundle, her eyes
huge and slow. The middle one is a skeleton sheathed in loose, polished
black skin. The eldest boy, with distended belly, has become so
listless that even his shadow seems dwindled and slow. Their bones have
eaten up what little flesh they had on their thighs and buttocks. 
..
On the
rare occasions when they cry, no tears emerge; their bodies are
reluctant to part with anything they can retain and consume. He can see
nothing in their eyes. In the past there was hunger in them, hunger and
hope and end of hope and pain, and perhaps even a puzzled resentment, a
kind of muted accusation, but now there is nothing, a slow,
beyond-the-end nothing.

Inside the tiny hut, his daughter is sitting on the floor, shaking,
trying to drag herself into a corner where she can disappear. Perhaps
she has smelled the metallic blood, or taken fright at the animal moan
issuing out of her father, a sound not possible of humans. 
…
Nitai
instinctively rubs his right hand, his working hand, against his
bunched-up lungi and grabs hold of his daughter’s throat with both his
hands, and squeezes and squeezes and squeezes until her protruding eyes
almost leave the stubborn ties of their sockets and her tongue lolls out
and her thrashing legs still. He crawls on the floor to the corner
where their last child is crying her weak, runty mewl and, with
trembling hands, covers her mouth and nose, pushing his hands down,
keeping them pressed, until there is nothing.

Nitai Das knows what to do. He lifts the jerrycan of Folidol left over
from three seasons ago and drinks, his mouth to the lip of the plastic
canister, until he can drink no more. His insides burn numb and he
thrashes and writhes like a speared earthworm, thrashes and writhes, a
pink foam emerging from his mouth, until he too is returned from the
nothing in his life to nothing.

….

Link: http://www.firstpost.com/printpage.php?idno=1714685&sr_no=0

…..

regards

The song is set in Aiman Kalyan, also
called Yaman Kalyan, the evening raag prescribed for creating a mood of
romance.

Her ‘Aaj jaane ki zid na karo’ is delivered in this
semi-free vein: her wilful, uneven pacing of the lyrics creates the illusion of
a chase, a constant fleeing of the words from the entrapments of beat. (This
technique, which has the mark of her teacher—the erratic and perennially
intoxicated Ustad Ashiq Ali Khan—bears its sweetest fruit in Khanum’s ghazals,
where strategic lags and compressions in the singing can enhance the pleasures
of a deferred rhyme.)