Review: The Army and Democracy by Aqil Shah

Omar Ali · November 6, 2019 · 23 comments

Book review as receieved from Major Amin

This is an interesting book and what the author wants to say is something I have always believed and said. However it is essential to examine in detail what Mr Aqil Shah has to say and offer some humble analysis .
On page- ix , would like to offer some comments on Mr Ahmad Mukhtar :–

Mr Mukhtar has been an industrialist who belongs to a town close to the military garrison town known as Kharian cantonment.He has always maintained good relations with the army like any good business man and ,frankly like most politicians in this world has no substance. Just like most generals worldwide are men without substance !

Firstly I do not agree with Aqil Shahs argument about Mr Jinnah on page-3 , nor with Aqil Shahs view that military coups and adventurism were not inevitable in Pakistan:–

We hold the view that Mr Jinnah the so called founder of Pakistan apart from British Raj , had inflicted the unkindest cut on Indian Muslims of Bengal and Punjab in 1916 and thereby by doing this had destabilized future politics of Indian Muslims for all times to come,Pakistan being the worst affected.

In the Lucknow Pact of 1916, without asking the Bengali Muslims or the Punjabi Muslims, he reduced Bengal Muslim majority in legislature from 52 to 40 % and in Punjab from 54 to 50 %. Continue reading Review: The Army and Democracy by Aqil Shah

Why brown Americans find ethnic and national factionalism amusing sometimes

Razib Khan · November 5, 2019 · 30 comments

What do they call a light-skinned Punjabi? “The brown guy.”

What do they call the Pakistani Muslim? “The guy who worships cows.”

What do they call the sharp-featured Khatri? “The Indian looking girl.”

What do they call the black-skinned Tamil? “The brown guy.”

What do they call the pale Pandit? “The brown guy.”

What do they call the Brahmin? “Curry smelling guy.”

All this is not to say that you have to be what other people call you. Just because most of my life people have assumed I’m Hindu, and that I speak Hindu, doesn’t mean I should identify as Hindu and embrace he nonexistent Hindu language. But, the “important” differences between North Indians and South Indians, dark and light, even Muslim and Hindu, can seem a bit marginal to some people from the American perspective…

The converse of this is that liberal socially progressive Indian Americans should not think that people in India are just versions of themselves in the past. People in India are a different “fork” and have their own identity.

BP ascension graphic

Razib Khan · November 3, 2019 · 10 comments


Last month BP received more traffic from India than the United States for the first time. Above you can see a three-year trendline of BP user growth. In a little over one year “Brown Pundits” in some form will have been around for 10 years…

Brown American in 2019

Razib Khan · November 1, 2019 · 72 comments


Interesting interview of Zoomers by Millennial Hasan Minhaj. Especially interesting to me because I’m Gen-X.

Near the end, there is a reference to the fact that the diversity within Indian Americans is something that these kids wish people understood more. One of the things that the old Sepia Mutiny blog made many Gen-X and Millennial brown Americans aware of is that there was a lot of variation we didn’t understand or comprehend since we were often the only representatives of all things brown for our social circle.

Another thing I’ve been thinking about recently is that many of the people who immigrated between 1965 and 1990 are now becoming grandparents as their 1.5 & 2nd gen offspring become parents. These people often left an India (or Pakistan or Bangladesh or Sri Lanka, etc.) that had been independent for only a few decades. Their children grow up on stories of the “old country”, but that country no longer exists. It’s been more than two generations now since the early professional immigrants left.

Maacher Jhol!

Razib Khan · November 1, 2019 · 12 comments


Think Indians Are Mostly Non-Vegetarian, Or Only ‘Upper Castes’ Are Otherwise? This Menu Smriti Will Change Your Views:

In fact, if we discount the smaller states (Northeast excluding Assam and Goa) and consider the rest, we are left with only three provinces across the country where the meat-eating percentage on a weekly basis is in excess of 80 per cent – West Bengal, Assam and Kerala.

It seems possible that the higher fraction of meat-eaters in UP vs. the other major northwestern states is probably largely the function of the higher fraction of Muslims.

Food!

Razib Khan · October 27, 2019 · 20 comments


A commenter below mentioned offhand how they didn’t like beef. Myself, I love beef. And growing up beef curry was something we ate a lot. Since we were Bengali we ate more fish and shrimp of course. I had assumed that among Muslims in the Indian subcontinent this would be common, least outside of Hindu-majority areas. But when I hit Google it seems “Bangladeshi beef curry” is one of the top hits.

Our of curiosity, is beef curry not eaten much among Muslims in Pakistan?

This brings me some confusion, and makes me wonder what else I don’t know. What’s the most curious or interesting aspect of regional Indian cuisine? For example, Lisa M. claims that a lot of classic Bengali food is actually from Odisha (chefs from that state went to work in Bengal).

Probably the strangest thing about Bengali food, aside from the copious usage of mustard oil, is many of us really love dried fish (shutki).

When you have a hammer everything is a nail

Razib Khan · October 26, 2019 · 25 comments

A Racist Attack Shows How Whiteness Evolves
An assault at a New Jersey high school football game had an unexpected cast of characters:

Two 17-year-old boys accused of harassing four African-American middle schoolgirls — using racial slurs and urinating on one of the victims — are facing charges including bias intimidation and lewdness.

The incident, which took place during an Oct. 18 high school football game in the New Jersey suburb of Lawrence Township and was partly captured on a video that circulated on social media, involves a cast of characters that has given some observers pause: Police say the boys are of Indian descent.

While it’s tempting to see the reported ethnicity of the boys suspected in the assault as complicating the story and raising questions about whether the assault should be thought of as racist, I look at it through a different lens. Instead of asking what the boys’ reported racial identity tells us about the nature of the attack, we should see the boys as enacting American whiteness through anti-black assault in a very traditional way. In doing so, the assailants are demonstrating how race is a social construct that people make through their actions. They show race in the making, and show how race is something we perform, not just something we are in our blood or in the color of our skin.

I want to emphasize the “complicating” aspect. Many American intellectuals don’t want to complicate an already tragic story, in black and white. Those of us of “Asian American” origin complicate that story (as do people of Latino background), so we are co-opted into the preexistent story that already exists. We are subalterns in a black and white story.

So these boys are brown kids in “whiteface”, to serve a particular narrative.

But, I believe literally every one of the South Asian readers of The New York Times that read this knows very well that anti-black racism is not something learned in the United States of America by Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, etc.

Why do nonmuslims treat muslims so badly (g)?

AnAn · October 26, 2019 · 6 comments

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTiE4xTvPzA

There are few examples of nonmuslim sectarian mistreatment of muslims more glaring than the way nonmuslims have abysmally betrayed LBGTQ muslims. Nonmuslim LBTGTQ are celebrated by Xi Jinping, Trump, Modi, Lebron James and many others. Any mistreatment of LBGTQ nonmuslims correctly dominates news coverage around the world and leads to massive global pressure. But when it comes to muslim LBGTQ, nonmuslims become suddenly silent.

 

The above video details the severe persecution of Palestinian LGBTQ. Palestinian LGBTQ have long been attacked by Palestinians, the muslim world and nonmuslim world.

 

Where are PM Modi, President Xi Jinping, President Trump, Lebron James, PM Bibi Netanyahu, PM designate Gantz? Do Englishman and Englishwoman feel guilt for the enormous suffering they have inflicted upon Palestinian LBGTQ during English empire and ever since the end of English empire? This blood debt could be repaid by giving English permanent residence status to every Palestinian LBGTQ who passes a background check to weed out violent criminals and members of organized crime.

 

Not that muslims are doing any better when it comes to Palestinian LBGTQ rights. Global muslim leaders Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, have you no tears and compassion for Palestinian LBGTQ? How will you be able to look up upon Allah after having betrayed Palestinian LBGTQ?

Continue reading Why do nonmuslims treat muslims so badly (g)?

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