Category: Uncategorized

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..

On 20^th January, 1972, Chief Marshal Law Administrator and President of Pakistan—Mr. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto—called a meeting of the country’s most eminent scientists in Multan. Pakistan had faced the ignominy of terrible defeat at the hands of Indian army a few months ago. Mr. Bhutto asked the scientists to start working on assembly of a nuclear bomb. While the experienced heads declined to commit to this venture, younger scientists unanimously responded that it could be done in five years. Mr. Bhutto was satisfied by the response and promised his help.

In July 1974, a letter arrived at the Prime Minister’s(Mr. Bhutto’s) secretariat from the Netherlands. The correspondent claimed to be a physicist working for a European nuclear consortium. He claimed to have obtained blue prints for a revolutionary new process involved in building a nuclear bomb. The person, let’s call him AK, was working as a technical translator for the multinational URENCO consortium. He had claimed in his letter of ‘writing innumerable research papers and an internationally renowned book’. Son of migrants from the Indian state of Bhopal,AK had been living in Europe for 13 years and was passionate about ‘debates about the Hindu ba**ards over the border who had ransacked his old home in 1947’. Mr. Bhutto tasked an Intelligence Agency to investigate the whereabouts of this mysterious scientist named AK. It was found that he had worked as Inspector of Weights and Measures for the Karachi post office in the 1960s, after obtaining a science degree from Karachi University. He left for West Germany for further studies and received an offer to attend a series of introductory lectures in Metallurgy in September 1962, by West Berlin Technical University. He moved, with his newly married wife, to Holland in 1963 and continued his education at Delft University. In his spare time, he used to write letters to European Newspapers and magazines that he felt had misrepresented Pakistan.

Mr. Bhutto was satisfied by AK’s track record and invited him to start the process of assembling a nuclear bomb for Pakistan. He was provided a laboratory to run and unlimited funding as well as official patronage. After smuggling different parts required for building the bomb from a plethora of countries, through not-so-legal channels, AK succeeded in completing the crucial step in manufacturing a nuclear bomb. The rest of hard work was done by Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC), an organization that AK hated with a vengeance.
By this time, AK had developed an acute case of megalomania. AK’s psychiatrist at that time, Professor Haroon Ahmed mentioned in his reports that by this time, ‘he was suffering from depression, and was classically manic’. He used to boast, “Jinnah Built Pakistan but I saved it”. AK even had an intelligence team follow his Dutch Wife and daughters because he thought they were more loyal to Europe than they were to Pakistan. In 1984, he called a reporter at a local Urdu digest and asked him to send a list of questions for interview. He was so disappointed with the list that he threw it away and drafted his own set of questions. He asked himself: “What do you think was your greatest achievement?” and “Did the government recognize your contribution?” In February 1984, he called Nawai Waqt and used the same formula. He used to give charity to mosques and schools, all of which had to bear his name as ‘testimony to his greatness’. In 1986, he invited a journalist from a small-circulation weekly digest called Hurmat to interview him at his laboratory. It resulted in a series of articles and a biography full of accolades for Mr. AK. One of the articles echoed AK’s inner thoughts as “In order to overcome the energy crisis in Pakistan,
the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission should be overhauled and its leadership should be handed over to this Mard e Momin of Iqbal”.

After Pakistan’s requirements for nuclear materials were fulfilled, AK started selling different parts as surplus to the highest bidder. He chose first Dubai and later Timbuktu as his operational base for nuclear proliferation. The Afghan War prevented United States to clamp down on his activities but the noose started tightening in the 90s. His footprints were all over the nuclear proliferation racket around the world, from Libya to Iran to North Korea, earning him the nickname “Typhoid Mary of Nuclear Proliferation”. In 2001, Musharraf was forced by the International community to get rid of AK and his crime syndicate, after two of AK’s ex-colleagues were found to have travelled to Afghanistan and met Osama bin Laden (OBL) there. Intelligence sources in India and US allege that AK co-owned Al-Shifa chemical factory in Sudan with OBL and OBL had financed construction of Hendrina Khan Hotel in Timbuktu. In 2004, AK apologized to the nation in a televised address for his “errors of judgment related to unauthorized proliferation activities”. Musharraf noted in his memoir, “The truth is that he was just a metallurgist, responsible for only one link in the complex chain of nuclear development. But he had managed to build himself up into Albert Einstein and Robert Openheimer rolled into one”.

The arrogant “Father of the Bomb” started writing elementary- school-style essays for a national newspaper few years ago, continuing his crusade against common sense and reason. He has made hundreds of factual errors in his “columns” over the years along with an attempted whitewash of history. His most recent diatribes have been directed against chairman of PAEC Munir Ahmed Khan and Dr. Abdus Salam, Pakistan’s only nobel laureate. AK has accused them of selling Pakistan’s nuclear secrets while comfortably ignoring his own efforts to sell the same secrets to the highest bidder.Without efforts of these gents, technicians such as AK would have miserably failed in the quest for nuclear bomb.These inneundos amount to slander and should be challenged in a court of law. Or perhaps, people living in stone houses should avoid throwing stones at others?
(previously published by The Nation. https://nation.com.pk/11-Aug-2014/father-of-the-bum)

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).

 

This was done already, but I guess periodical reminders are important.

http://www.brownpundits.com/2018/03/08/no-mughals-didnt-loot-india-they-made-us-rich/#comment-5282

Well, all the knowledge on mughals is on display here already.

https://twitter.com/pseudoerasmus/status/874818240563863557
“Mughal India was probably one of the most extractive regimes in history ”

https://twitter.com/pseudoerasmus/status/890495958424973312

“Shocking # of people believe India’s global share of GDP in 1750 was an indicator of living standards! Contrast with ”

https://twitter.com/Parikramah/status/837077222091546624

1. During Mughal rule, Hindu peasants who could not afford the Islamic jiziya tax would be forced to sell a son into eunuch slavery.

https://twitter.com/Parikramah/status/837081691407667200

https://twitter.com/Parikramah/status/837079573913300992

Facts dont cease to exist just because you choose to ignore them.

”
Europe was well on its way ahead of India.

Leonardo da Vinci was contemporary of Babur
1452-1519, 1483 – 1530
Copernicus was contemporary of Humayun
1473-1543 , 1508- 1556
Galileo Galilei was contemporary of Akbar
1564-1642 ,1542-1605
Francis Bacon was contemporary of Jahangir
1561-1626,1569 – 1627
Descartes was contemporary of Shah Jahan
1596-1650, 1592 -1666
Newton was a contemporary of Aurangzeb
1643- 1727, 1618-1707

The only people who came close to working out the ideas of calculus was in kerala by Madhava and his school and the other place with something along lines of chemical industry was also in India.

https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/the-origins-of-chemical-industry/3008292.article

Madhava of Sangamagrama, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhava_of_Sangamagrama

”

One oxford or Cambridge perhaps did more than entire Islamic contribution including mughals to India. We have gone down this route before already. Facts are clear. The only worthwhile contribution was in subjective fields like arts ,food,music, architecture. Here too one isnt sure how well would they match to wonders that did exist or would have existed.

https://www.firstpost.com/india/world-landmarks-taj-mahal-ranks-third-after-machu-picchu-angkor-wat-916635.html

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/taj-mahal-2nd-best-unesco-world-heritage-site-after-angkor-wat/articleshow/61946063.cms

A Hindu temple far away from India still ranks higher. As to food, It is India that was the land of spices, and it was spice race that got colonial empires interest in India to begin with. As for music, India already had an evolved music tradition and arts . It is safe to say, it was Islam which benefited from contact with India than the other way around. Harking back to Music, food ,arts, architecture of just one empire reveals incredible myopia. One would call this fanaticism .

Ever wondered Why not much is said about scientific contribution in India by left?. Because they have a lot to hide and deflect. So people write about jonardan ganeri and logic in bengal, or romila thapar questions why kerala mathematicians didnt make progress to physics like Newton. Logic is pathetic compared to science. And progress requires a large network of people to work and kerala school was small network. Indian muslims and mughal aficionados have been a pampered lot. Having been pampered by lies, truth seems shocking.It is not the questions that have been asked that reveal the truth where left is concerned, It is the questions that have never been allowed to be asked that reveals the truth.

I would claim that if one did a decent study on this it would reveal that India didnt gain much and in areas like science and freedom of thought, Islam;s contribution wasnt even zero. It was wholly negative and it took away precious space that could have been occupied by other belief systems. As it was the case in earlier India, whether in was Buddhism, ajivika, jainism, atheism among others. Infact there were many belief systems that were vying for more space before Islam came in. Many,egalitarian in their views. And it was they who ended up as the biggest losers in this cultural exchange.

 

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).

Trump is not the first-ever Republican President with right-wing followers. However, he and his Presidency elicit a visceral response from liberals, both in the United States and abroad. This article in Democracy Journal takes a detailed look at why this happened.

Mass Psychology in the Age of Trump

Excerpts:

“What precisely is it about Trump that drives liberals to these cataclysmic views? The answer has to do as much with liberals as with Trump himself. First, there is the nature of liberal ideology itself, which—because of its peculiar characteristics and internal contradictions—contributes to the present situation. Second, there are psychological factors, the dispositional tendencies of those who are drawn to liberal ideology. These two elements are related because there is a close and reciprocal connection—what Max Weber called an “elective affinity”—between psychological needs on one hand and the philosophical contents of an ideology on the other.”

“A mad social scientist could not have devised a character who is more antithetical to the liberal worldview than Donald Trump—even a staunch conservative with a more disciplined commitment to right-wing ideals. Trump is unique in his ability to provoke, upset, and irritate those with liberal sensibilities. No doubt this is part of his appeal to a certain segment of the population—the ones who have been told since Nixon that “liberal elites” were laughing at them.”

We are now equipped to answer the question: Why does Trump—even more than other conservatives—make liberal brains go haywire? It is because he makes it impossible, in practice, for liberals to be tolerant (egalitarian), rational, and optimistic about human nature—three things that are essential aspects of liberal ideology and liberal psychology. Trump makes it preposterous, in other words, for liberals to be “liberal” in the usual sense.

Like a spoiled, spiteful, indifferent king, he makes no pretense of listening to or representing us—half the nation—in any way. In this respect, he is worse—more personally contemptuous of liberal norms, traditions, and accomplishments—than Nixon, Reagan, and Bush. If Trump were more religious he would resemble a pre-Enlightenment figure; it would be difficult to find a less scientifically informed member of the upper class. And yet the whole country, it seems, is held hostage to his narcissistic wounds, authoritarian rants, and Twitterstorms.

“In a preface to The Mass Psychology of Fascism, Wilhelm Reich wrote that “‘fascism’ is only the organized political expression of the structure of the average man’s character.” The fact that authoritarian inclinations are so mundane and quotidian means that they are a constant danger—and a constant source of anxiety for the liberal. It would be foolish at this historical moment to suggest that fascism has come to America. It has not. But to many of us, it feels as if we are closer to it than we ever thought possible.”

The Wachowski siblings said they created the Matrix inspired by the Ramayana, Bhagavad Gita and Buddhism. The Matrix is a great summary of Arya culture, values, philosophy, science and civilization. Veedu Vidz is one of the wisest commentators with Hindustani Bharatiya heritage.