Why one earth is the Pakistani delegate wearing a translation piece? Even I, with my much weaker grasp of Hindustani (decent enough to understand Pakistani dramas), could understand most of this clip with the exception of a few Sanskriti/Shuddh Hindi words here & there.
Category: Uncategorized
When all you have is postcolonial theory everything is about the white man
Recently I read a piece, Confronting White Supremacy in Christianity as a Christian South Asian, which is interesting from an anthropological perspective. After all, I don’t know what it’s like to be a progressive South Asian Christian, which is the perspective of this author. But as I read the piece I felt that it elided and conflated so much. A much deeper and richer story was being erased so as to serve up another illustration of the primacy of white supremacy.
If you read From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East you know that how white American Christians treat non-white Christians can be rather ridiculous. One of the stories I recall is of an Arab Christian waiter in Jerusalem who wore a cross, and was very irritated with white Americans with strong Southern accents would inquire when he had converted to Christ. This person of course privately scoffed, and reflected that when his ancestors had been Christians for centuries his customer’s ancestors were still worshipping pagan gods.
Here is a passage from the above piece which I think really confuses:
Christianity in India highlights a violent history of white supremacy through colonization and mass conversion by Europeans including, the Portuguese, Irish, Dutch, Italian, French, and English many of whom hold cultural influence that has remained to this day in places like Kerala, Pondicherry, and Goa. Similarly, there doesn’t appear to be much of a difference in the diaspora. For instance, my family converted to Christianity while living under the Apartheid regime in South Africa, an entire system of white supremacy supported by ‘Christian’ values.
The writer is a young Canadian woman whose family is from South Africa of Indian heritage. Additionally, though she never is explicit about it, her family seems to be evangelical Protestant. This is an interesting perspective, but it is a totally different one from that of South Asian Christianity.
Bracketing Kerala with Pondicherry and Goa is simply misleading. Christians are nearly 20% of the population of Kerala, and most are St. Thomas Christians, whose origins predate European contact with India by many centuries. Originally part of the territory of the Persian Church of the East, modern St. Thomas Christians have splintered into numerous groups with varied affiliations, in part due to the trauma of contact with Portuguese Catholicism. But through it all they maintain an indigenous Christian identity which is distinct from any colonial imprint.
Second, large numbers of India’s Christians are converts from Dalit populations, or, tribal peoples in the Northeast who are racially and culturally distinct from other South Asians. The framing in the piece is that South Asian Christianity has to bear the cross of colonialism, but a good argument can be made that for Dalit converts and tribal groups in the Northeast Christianity is the vehicle for resistance to oppression, assimilation, and colonialism on the part of the dominant South Asian cultural matrix.
This is not to say that the piece does not speak to a real dynamic. North American white evangelical Protestantism is inordinately freighted with racialized baggage. And it is easy to reduce into the Manichaean framework of postcolonial theory, where whites are the sole agents of action in the world. But to the generality, Indian Christianity has many disparate threads, and this sort of reduction is misleading.
Clash Of Civilisations – Samuel Huntington
After Ukraine, China asserting itself, Turkey – Rise of Erdogan, Myanmar (Burma) crisis, Even India with rise of Modi . I think this book deserves a revisit. Perhaps all his works deserves a visit.
collection of his quotes .
“This changing international environment brought to the fore the fundamental cultural differences between Asian and American civilizations. At the broadest level the Confucian ethos pervading many Asian societies stressed the values of authority, hierarchy, the subordination of individual rights and interests, the importance of consensus, the avoidance of confrontation, “saving face,” and, in general, the supremacy of the state over society and of society over the individual. In addition, Asians tended to think of the evolution of their societies in terms of centuries and millennia and to give priority to maximizing long-term gains. These attitudes contrasted with the primacy in American beliefs of liberty, equality, democracy, and individualism, and the American propensity to distrust government, oppose authority, promote checks and balances, encourage competition, sanctify human rights, and to forget the past, ignore the future, and focus on maximizing immediate gains. The sources of conflict are in fundamental differences in society and culture.”
“In the post-Cold War world flags count and so do other symbols of cultural identity, including crosses, crescents, and even head coverings, because culture counts, and cultural identity is what is most meaningful to most people.”
“ability of Asian regimes to resist Western human rights pressures was reinforced by several factors. American and European businesses were desperately anxious to expand their trade with and their investment in these rapidly”
“The dangerous clashes of the future are likely to arise from the interaction of Western arrogance, Islamic intolerance, and Sinic assertiveness.”
“The philosophical assumptions, underlying values, social relations, customs, and overall outlooks on life differ significantly among civilizations. The revitalization of religion throughout much of the world is reinforcing these cultural differences. Cultures can change, and the nature of their impact on politics and economics can vary from one period to another. Yet the major differences in political and economic development among civilizations are clearly rooted in their different cultures. East Asian economic success has its source in East Asian culture, as do the difficulties East Asian societies have had in achieving stable democratic political systems. Islamic culture explains in large part the failure of democracy to emerge in much of the Muslim world.”
“The prevalence of anti-patriotic attitudes among liberal intellectuals led some of them to warn their fellow liberals of the consequences of such attitudes for the future not of America but of American liberalism. Most Americans, as the American public philosopher Richard Rorty has written, take pride in their country, but ‘many of the exceptions to this rule are found in colleges and universities, in the academic departments that have become sanctuaries for left-wing political views.’ These leftists have done ‘a great deal of good for . . . women, African-Americans, gay men and lesbians. . . . But there is a problem with this Left: it is unpatriotic. It repudiates the idea of a national identity and the emotion of national pride.’ If the Left is to retain influence, it must recognize that a ‘sense of shared national identity . . . is an absolutely essential component of citizenship.’ Without patriotism, the Left will be unable to achieve its goals for America. Liberals, in short, must use patriotism as a means to achieve liberal goals”
“What, however, makes culture and ideology attractive? They become attractive when they are seen as rooted in material success and influence. Soft power is power only when it rests on a foundation of hard power. Increases in hard economic and military power produce enhanced self-confidence, arrogance, and belief in the superiority of one’s own culture or soft power compared to those of other peoples and greatly increase its attractiveness to other peoples. Decreases in economic and military power lead to self-doubt, crises of identity, and efforts to find in other cultures the keys to economic, military, and political success.”
“The argument now that the spread of pop culture and consumer goods around the world represents the triumph of Western civilization trivializes Western culture. The essence of Western civilization is the Magna Carta, not the Magna Mac. The fact that non-Westerners may bite into the latter has no implications for their accepting the former.”
“There can be no true friends without true enemies. Unless we hate what we are not, we cannot love what we are.”
“reaffirming their Western identity and Westerners accepting their civilization as unique not universal and uniting to renew and preserve it against challenges from non-Western societies.”
“These transnationalists have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite’s global operations”
“the situation between Ukraine and Russia is ripe for the outbreak of security competition between them. Great powers that share a long and unprotected common border, like that between Russia and Ukraine, often lapse into competition driven by security fears. Russia and Ukraine might overcome this dynamic and learn to live together in harmony, but it would be unusual if they do.”
“One grim Weltanschauung for this new era was well expressed by the Venetian nationalist demagogue in Michael Dibdin’s novel, Dead Lagoon: “There can be no true friends without true enemies. Unless we hate what we are not, we cannot love what we are. These are the old truths we are painfully rediscovering after a century and more of sentimental cant. Those who deny them deny their family, their heritage, their culture, their birthright, their very selves! They will not lightly be forgiven.”
“God and Caesar, church and state, spiritual authority and temporal authority, have been a prevailing dualism in Western culture. Only in Hindu civilization were religion and politics also so distinctly separated. In Islam, God is Caesar; in China and Japan, Caesar is God; in Orthodoxy, God is Caesar’s junior partner.”
“Collective will supplants individual whim”
“People define themselves in terms of ancestry, religion, language, history, values, customs, and institutions. They identify with cultural groups: tribes, ethnic groups, religious communities, nations, and, at the broadest level, civilizations. People use politics not just to advance their interests but also to define their identity. We know who we are only when we know who we are not and often only when we know whom we are against.”
“Hypocrisy, double standards, and “but nots” are the price of universalist pretensions. Democracy is promoted, but not if it brings Islamic fundamentalists to power; nonproliferation is preached for Iran and Iraq, but not for Israel; free trade is the elixir of economic growth, but not for agriculture; human rights are an issue for China, but not with Saudi Arabia; aggression against oil-owning Kuwaitis is massively repulsed, but not against non-oil-owning Bosnians. Double standards in practice are the unavoidable price of universal standards of principle.”
“It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation-states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”
“Becoming a modern society is about industrialization, urbanization, and rising levels of literacy, education, and wealth. The qualities that make a society Western, in contrast, are special: the classical legacy, Christianity, the separation of church and state, the rule of law, civil society.”
“Every civilization sees itself as the center of the world and writes its history as the central drama of human history.”
“In the emerging world of ethnic conflict and civilizational clash, Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false; it is immoral; and it is dangerous.”
“Islam’s borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power.”
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”
“Democracy is premised, in some measure, on majority rule, and democracy is difficult in a situation of concentrated inequalities in which a large, impoverished majority confronts a small, wealthy oligarchy.”
The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (1991)“Cultural America is under siege. And as the Soviet experience illustrates, ideology is a weak glue to hold together people otherwise lacking racial, ethnic, and cultural sources of community.”
Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity (2004), p. 12“Many more people in the world are concerned with sports than with human rights.”
“In the emerging era, clashes of civilization are the greatest threat to world peace, and an international order based on civilizations is the surest safeguard against world war.”
“In Eurasia the great historic fault lines between civilizations are once more aflame. This is particularly true along the boundaries of the crescent-shaped Islamic bloc of nations, from the bulge of Africa to central Asia. Violence also occurs between Muslims, on the one hand, and Orthodox Serbs in the Balkans, Jews in Israel, Hindus in India, Buddhists in Burma and Catholics in the Philippines. Islam has bloody borders.”
“Religiosity distinguishes America from most other Western societies. Americans are also overwhelmingly Christian, which distinguishes them from many non-Western peoples. Their religiosity leads Americans to see the world in terms of good and evil to a much greater extent than most other peoples.”
“Dead Souls: The Denationalization of the American Elite,” The National Interest, November, 2002, p. 16“It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation-states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”
“The balance of power among civilizations is shifting: the West is declining in relative influence; Asian civilizations are expanding their economic,military, and political strength; Islam is exploding demographically with destabilizing consequences for Muslim countries and their neighbors; and non-Western civilizations generally are reaffirming the value of their own cultures.”
“Some Westerners, including President Bill Clinton, have argued that the West does not have problems with Islam but only with violent Islamist extremists.Fourteen hundred years of history demonstrate otherwise. The relations between Islam and Christianity, both Orthodox and Western, have often been stormy. Each has been the other’s Other. Th e twentieth-century conflict between liberal democracy and Marxist-Leninism is only a fleeting and superficial historical phenomenon compared to the continuing and deeply conflictual relation between Islam and Christianity. At times, peaceful coexistence has prevailed; more often the relation has been one of intense rivalry and of varying degrees of hot war. Their “historical dynamics,” John Esposito comments, “. . . often found the two communities in competition, and locked at times in deadly combat, for power, land, and souls.” Across the centuries the fortunes of the two religions have risen and fallen in a sequence o f momentous surges, pauses, and countersurges. ”
“Some Westerners […] have argued that the West does not have problems with Islam but only with violent Islamist extremists. Fourteen hundred years of history demonstrate otherwise.”
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/38041.Samuel_P_Huntington
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Samuel_P._Huntington
Clash of civilizations
On the Rohingya issue
I have a post over at my primary blog, Rohingya Unmasking Complexity In A World We Want Simple. Because the Rohingya issue is going to be in the media spotlight for a bit in the near future we need to be clear about the deep historical facts, which frankly the press is going to not be concerned about in their reporting.
Will the last Parsi to die please blow out the sacred fire?
Our ancestors, Persia’s first-born, preserved their ancient faith in the underground warrens of Yazd. Zarthushti houses had to be on a lower level to Muslim homes so that if it rained the water of infidels couldn’t contaminate that of the believers. It is only fair that for the sake of those ancestors who have sacrificed so much that at least some of their descendants should go on to light the sacred fire for the generations to come.
Twitter is in a huff about Jiyo Parsis’s last-gasp campaign to raise the anemic Parsi birthrate through blunt ads. The liberal opposition are featuring an angsty article denouncing JP as racists:
Imagine a khap panchayat in rural Haryana – a kangaroo court of village elders – launching a slick ad campaign encouraging members of their caste to marry (each other) and rapidly multiply to increase their dwindling numbers.
(Disclaimer: I had my Navjot when I was nine, despite having a Hindu father.)
Anahita Mukherji is a US-based journalist who has a quarter-Parsi son with a full-Parsi name.
The author’s father is a Bengali Brahmin and she herself married out of the Parsi caste. Anahita’s only sop to her mother’s identity is to give her son a Parsi name.
Now she’s the designated American voice of the (liberal) pushback against those Indian Parsis who understandably want to preserve Zoroaster’s bloodline for posterity. If the Parsi community were to follow Anahita’s personal example; they’d be extinct in a generation.
She has every right to lead her life as she sees fit but it is unacceptable to hector others to follow her PC non-solutions. When it comes to the Parsi community there are simply no lemmings left to fall of the cliff.
Good luck Jiyo Parsi!
The Indo-Aryan question nearing resolution
India Today published my review of the current state of the genetics and genomics of the Indian subcontinent, and what it can tell us about the ethnogenesis of South Asians generally. In the piece I tried to be very circumspect and stick to what we know with a high, if not perfect, degree of certainty. Here I will add some comments where I reduce the threshold of certainty somewhat. That is, I’m going to include here my beliefs where I think I’m right, but in some details wouldn’t be surprised if I was wrong.
First, the title is Aryan wars: Controversy over new study claiming they came from the west 4,000 years ago. Writers don’t get to choose titles, and this is not one I would have chosen. But I am not in a position to care or know what draws clicks. Let’s note that this “controversy” is restricted mostly to India. Outside of India it’s not controversial, but a matter of the science, because people don’t have any political or social investment in the topic. It reminds me of debates about genetics and intelligence in the West, where emotions get overwrought and lies fly wildly with abandon.*
Second, there is a reference in the figures to an “Out of India” (OIT) model. That is, the Aryans migrated out of India, and implicitly the Indo-European languages derive from South Asia. I don’t think this theory has any support at all. That is, I think it is rather clear that proto-Indo-European probably emerged neither in Europe proper, nor in South Asia, but in the Inner Eurasian spaces between. But for an Indian audience ignoring OIT would seem a peculiar lacunae, so there was a reference added to the figure on that account (I pushed back against this, but do not make ultimate decisions on figures).
But I do think it was plausible up until 2009’s Reconstructing Indian History to suggest that most modern South Asian ancestry dates to the Pleistocene. In this framework the Indo-Europeanization of the subcontinent was primarily a cultural one, where small groups of Central Asians imposed their language on the native population. What the genome-wide work has shown is that South Asians are the product of a large-scale mixing process between a population very distant from West Eurasians (“Ancestral South Indians”, ASI) and a population which was indistinguishable from other West Eurasians (“Ancestral North Indians”, ANI).
Since ANI is indistinguishable from West Eurasians I hold it is clearly a West Eurasian population in provenance. Those who reject this position from a scientific perspective believe that there could have been some sort continuous zone of “ANI-like” habitation from northwestern South Asia up into northern Inner Eurasia (and perhaps toward West Asia as well) dating from the late Pleistocene. I do not that believe this is plausible, and I will tell you that prominent researchers who I have brought up this idea to are somewhat incredulous.**
Third, there are major unresolved issues genetically in relation to the dates and the total number of mixing populations. I am quite confident saying around half of the total South Asian genomic ancestry today derives from populations who were living outside of South Asia on the Holocene-Pleistocene boundary 11,700 years ago. Much of that ancestry probably flourished between the Caucasus and Zagros mountains. The remainder somewhere in the vast swath of territory between the Baltic and Siberia (perhaps further south, toward the Pamirs?).
But I am not confident of the relative balances of contribution to the ANI. It does seem that the northern component, which is derived in part from the southern component, is much more prominent in upper castes and northwestern populations. In contrast the southern component is found throughout the subcontinent.
In Genomic insights into the origin of farming in the Near East there is analysis of South Asia in the supplements. The author concludes that ANI can not be modeled as a single population (Zack Ajmal and I were saying this in 2010). The top hits for the sources of ANI tend to be the genomic sample from the Zagros, in western Iran (before subsequent admixture with Levantine farmers), and a population similar to the Yamna culture of the steppe. The issue seems to be that later steppe populations which harbor a fair amount of “Early European Farmer” ancestry (e.g., LBK in Central Europe) due likely to back migration aren’t good model fits.
Below are two plots, one showing a scatter of South Asian groups with their Iran_N (a sample from ~10,000 years ago) vs. Yamna (from ~5,000 years ago), and another with the ratios.
DO NOT TAKE THE PROPORTIONS LITERALLY. My intuition is that these models are overestimating the proportion of steppe ancestry, but my confidence in my intuition is low.
There are two groups enriched for Iran_N ancestry:
- Lower caste groups, especially from South India.
- Populations in southern Pakistan.
The reasons differ. If you have done genetic analysis of the Pakistani populations it seems quite obvious that unlike other groups in South Asia Pakistani groups facing the Arabian sea across from Oman have genuine Near Eastern ancestry. This affinity declines as you go north in Pakistan rather rapidly. Notice though one South Indian group: Jews from Cochin. This population clearly has recent Near Eastern ancestry.
The Kharia are an Austro-Asiatic Munda group. For whatever reason Austro-Asiatic groups seem to consistently have very little steppe ancestry. The Mala are Dalits from South India. The further up you go on the modal Iran_N-Yamna cline you see the populations are either upper caste, or, they are from the far northwest of the subcontinent.
The conclusion I derive from this is that first there was an early migration of West Eurasian populations consisting of Iranian farmers. This group mixed with the ASI element. The Indo-Aryans, which probably correlates with the Yamna-like component, arrived later as an overlay (and nearly half of their ancestry was derived from Iranian farmers). Then many South Asian populations have modifications on this base model of compound ANI + ASI; Munda and Bengali have later East Asian ancestry, while populations on the Arabian sea have Near Eastern ancestry.
Fourth, the story in India Today leans heavily on Y chromosome of R1a1a lineage. It is true we are Lords of the Steppe and destined to drive our enemies before us. But, it is not the primary story. And yet Y chromosomal phylogenies are easy for the public to understand. But they only make sense in light of the above framework. R1a1a is found in South Indian tribal populations. It seems likely that Indo-Aryan paternal lineages were highly invasive across the subcontinent, just as they were in Europe. In many cases they likely extended far beyond domains where Indo-European acculturation occurred.
I’m probably wrong on some of the details. But I suspect the final story will not be so different from this.
Finally, I will mention the cultural element here. There is a fair amount of the discussion of the form “so you are saying the ancestors of Indians are Europeans?” or “does this mean Hinduism is not Indian?”
The piece was about genetics and demography, not my opinions about culture. So I will say this:
- The “West” as an entity is no older that Classical Greece. 500 BC. My own personal position, strongly held, is that the West should indicate cultures and societies which descend from the European societies which adhered to the Western Church around ~1000 AD (some nations, like Lithuania, became absorbed into this cultural complex hundreds of years later). So Russia is not the West. And Merovingian Francia is not the West.
- Indian civilization of what we term the Hindu variety coalesced in the period between between 500 BC and 500 AD, from before the Mauryas, up to the Guptas. Obviously the period before 1000 BC was important in setting the ground-work, but I do not believe it was Indian as we’d understand it in anything but the geographical sense, nor was it Hindu in any way we’d recognize it today (similarly, Shang dynasty China was not China as we’d understand, which came into being after 500 BC).
These positions mean that I think nationalist passions are in the “not even wrong” category. Indian Hindu civilization is indigenous by definition, since it was synthesized in situ on the edge of historical perception and attestation (for the record, I think Adi Shankara was critical in the completion of a crystalized self-conception of Hindu religio-philosophical thought, but its origins predate him). Similarly, Indian civilization was not seeded by white Europeans because white Europeans were only coming into being in Europe when the Indus Valley civilization was collapsing.
That is all (for now).
Addendum: The first tranche of ancient DNA should be out in a few months. Also, there is another paper on Indian genetics in the work from the usual suspects. There won’t be anything totally surprising (or so I’ve been told).
* By lies, I mean the contention that intelligence is an “invalid” instrument in relation to predictiveness, or, if it is valid, it is not genetically heritable. People routinely lie about these facts in discussion or spread lies because there are socially preferred positions which they conform to. Similarly, many questions about Indian history seem to hinge on widely promoted lies.
** This model needs to also confront the massive mixing of the last 4,000 years. If it is true then it is ASI which is mostly likely intrusive, because it is not creditable that these two populations were in nearby proximity for tens of thousands of years without exchanging genes.
Objectives Resolution: Logical Culmination or Building Block?
The creation of Pakistan was a culmination of the ‘Indian Muslim National Project’ that was started by Muslim Elites primarily based in UP. It was bound to be a country where religion took center stage in the political arena. Led by a charismatic, populist British lawyer, All India Muslim League was a hotchpotch of landed gentry and titled aristocracy. The Second World War paved the way for an early exit by the British and handed a historic chance to Indian leaders to decide their destiny. It is difficult to predict if a ‘United India’ would have survived for some time in the absence of British interlocutors since fratricide and ethnic cleansing in Potohar had started much before the actual partition. The Muslim Elite (Ashraf) that founded Pakistan decided that the country would be an ideological state, the ideology was chosen to be Islam. Not because the elite overwhelmingly consisted of Islamists (with a few exceptions) but because religion is an easy way to manipulate people. The Khilafat movement had provided a glimpse of what mixing religion and politics could achieve and Muslim Leaguers were well-aware of its power, which is why they used the ‘Islam in Danger’ card during the 1945 election.
Continue reading Objectives Resolution: Logical Culmination or Building Block?
Headwinds Ahead : The Growing Divergence Between Truth and Productivity?
Throughout Human history, Productivity has required an understanding of nature, whether it meant predicting the seasons for agriculture or navigating the seas for trade through astronomy or curing diseases through medicine. European societies gained a huge advantage over other societies by creating incentives for exploration of ideas by institutionalizing patent & copy right laws in the late medieval period and eventually by enshrining the notion of free speech.
Productivity leaped ahead in these societies, which promoted a culture of intellectual exploration of ideas. And never has there been a society where a scientist like Einstein gained a degree of popularity transcending his own time to become the visual cognate to the word “genius”. All this gave a great boost to the social status of many scientists in these societies. And in the 20th century people across the world are now familiar with the name ‘Einstein’. Meanwhile, the establishment of awards to scientists has been an annual affair for over a century by the prestigious Nobel committee. However, the nature of progress itself thus far should not reassure us with regards to the future.
Continue reading Headwinds Ahead : The Growing Divergence Between Truth and Productivity?
Clarifying Two Misconceptions
First up, I want to admit that I been a harsh critic of Pakistan Army’s interference in political matters, their gross inefficiency during all the wars that they fought (and lost), their myopic worldview and land grabbing in the garb of ‘National Security’. However, I believe that two very common misconceptions about our army need to be addressed.
- While talking about General Zia, an Islamist dictator who ruled Pakistan for eleven years (1977-88), many people refer to his role in the ‘Black September’ events from 1970. If you try to look this up on the internet, there are conflicting stories about his involvement. What we know for sure is that he was stationed in Jordan as part of a military training mission (Read here) sent by Pakistan in the aftermath of the 1967 Arab-Israel war. The Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) in Amman at the time was Mr. Tayyab Siddiqui. According to an article he wrote in 2010, (Read here)
“Following the June 1967 military debacle, the Arabs requested Pakistan for military training. Pakistan sent training contingents to Syria, Jordan and Iraq.”
In August-September 1970, the Palestinians, aided by the Syrians, revolted against the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. During the battle, the Commanding Officer (CO) of a Jordanian infantry unit deserted. King Hussain asked Brigadier Zia to take charge of that unit temporarily. Zia sought permission from the embassy where Mr. Siddiqui established contact with Secretary Defence, Mr. Ghiasuddin. Ghias’s comments are the most cringe-worthy issue in this whole affair. He cabled Amman that
“We had [performed] Istikhara, Hashmite Kingdom’s star is ascendant. Go ahead. Follow king’s commands.”
In Ambassador Siddiqui’s words:
“That the foreign and defence policy of Pakistan was formulated not on a dispassionate analysis of the situation but on the dubious religious invocation still amazes me”.
Zia took temporary charge of the unit but before any fighting could take place, the Syrians withdrew and the offensive ended. Later on, Zia developed contacts with Palestinian leadership and was not accused of being the ‘Butcher of Palestinians’ by any Palestinian fighter. In fact, Yasser Arafat visited Pakistan three times during Zia’s regime.
2. You might have seen a picture of a soldier inspecting a Bengali man’s Dhoti, from 1971. That is provided as a proof that Army folks there used to inspect Bengali men’s genitals to decide if they were Muslim or not (based on circumcision status). While the Pakistan Army indulged in some of the worst atrocities against the Bengalis, this picture is not a valid evidence.
This picture was taken by Indian photographer Kishor Parekh. In an interview, his son Swapan Parekh mentioned that it was a photograph of Indian army personnel checking the [Bengali] collaborators for weapons. The caption in Kishor Parekh’s book validates this backstory.
The pork episode of Master of None
The Aerogram has a piece out, Bacon & (Un)Belief: Religion & American Secularism in Master of None, which reviews The Master of None episode about religion. I kind of agree that it was a little unbelievable in relation to his cousin, and how quickly he became a porkoholic (I don’t think pork is superior to chicken, but that’s a matter of taste).
That being said I think it is important to note a personal aspect of Aziz Ansari’s relationship to religion. Here’s a correction to an article in The New York Times profiling Aziz:
In an earlier version of this article, Michael Schur, the co-creator of “Parks and Recreation,” partly described Mr. Ansari as a Muslim. Mr. Ansari describes himself as an atheist.
Aziz Ansari does not define himself from what I can tell as a bad or liberal Muslim. He says he’s not religious. He happens to be a guy who is an atheist, a very negatively viewed group, who is from a Muslim background, a very negatively viewed group. That is one way we have a lot in common.
Also, I had a bacon experience very similar to Aziz. Though in my case it was at a friend’s house where they were Hindus from West Bengal, and my friend was having bacon. My mom came over and I had a piece of bacon in my mouth. She was a little chagrined. She said I’m not supposed to eat pork products and not to do it again.
In general I still don’t eat much pork and ham. But I really love bacon, and have no problem with pork sausages.