Red Lines on BP

I prefer the motto “Nothing is Sacred.”

I do think personal insults & abuse are below the line.

However there is a difference between Islamophobia (abusing people because they are Muslim) and criticising Islam.

To apply this to the Bahá’í faith; I obviously would be sensitive about my Prophet but at the same time criticising my faith doesn’t necessarily mean that I am being criticised.

as a good rule of thumb we should try and avoid gratuitous abuse in any scenario but intellectual questions are necessary.

Cake & Rape

I shared this on Facebook (& Instagram) an some Pakistanis started accusing me of selective posting. Why hadn’t I mentioned the rapes in India, they asked?

I had shared a post of the perpetrators of the rapes in Katua and Unnao. We need to move to a Western model of immediate shaming of the accused (if proven guilty) and a Saudi method of instant dispatch. India’s system of justice is shambolic. So is Pakistan but then there is that steel of vigilante violence in Pakistan.

The problem with any discussion on South Asia is that it immediately descends into a Indo-Pak comparison slanging match. I lay this at the door of colonialism but even so both Indians & Pakistanis should not be stupid enough to fall prey to it. We have some serious regional issues and most prevalent is violence against women.

On a personal note many Pakistanis and many Bahai’s sort of see my marriage to be crossing over to the other side. For the Pakistanis it’s the insult that I have adopted more of my wife’s Indian heritage than she has mine (by an order of magnitude). For the Bahais it’s the fact that my wife is an avowed atheist and questions basically everything.

Of course in BP it’s hard to communicate that but it’s only because we have the virtual veil over this blog.

However my problem with Indian commentators is that in their haste to deal with the Pakistani psychosis (which is a thing) they’ll latch onto everything. Write what you know and if one can’t do that then know what you write.

As an example we went to watch the excellent Pakistani film, Cake, late last night in the neighbouring shire. A lot of people are now saying that this is a turning point in Pakistani cinema and it’s a coming of age for the genre. I made the observation (which I borrowed from my best friend) that Pakistani dramas follow the hyper-realist Persian tradition since they don’t have the budgets and have to skirt censorship. There’s probably some historical angle to it but my point being is just because I’m making an observation doesn’t mean that I’m negating the underlying fact that Pakistani cinema ultimately split from Bollywood in 1947.

Finally India and Pakistan are on different spectrums of the politics of hate. With movies like Cake featuring a Urglish speaking Sindhi family going back to their roots, Pakistan has been trying to project soft power post 9-11. Pakistan is trying to emerge from a century of the politics of hate ever since Allama Iqbal recanted Saare Jahan se Accha after his Cambridge years.

On other hand with the brutal rape of an 8yr old Muslim girl, whose religion & ethnicity was central to the attack, India is now understanding the cost of the politics of hate. Let’s see the extent to which liberal India can push back and reverse the tide but it’s the logical outcome of “othering” the Muslim minority over the past 2/3 decades.

This isn’t about point-scoring; the tragic and lasting legacy of colonialism has been that it’s divided us in these mutually exclusive camps. Maybe more marriages, friendships and associations over caste, national & religious lines will help heal the divide.

Ancient Egyptian, Arya and Greek history

Almost everything we think we know about history is wrong. We don’t actually know how old the Pyramids and ancient Egyptian remains are. We don’t actually know when Alexander the Great was born. Perhaps we need to reexamine all our ancient history from every part of the world with a fresh lens.

Some earlier articles that relate to this are:

A special shout out to Razib Khan for all the many things he has taught me, and not just with respect to genetics and genetic history. Look forward to learning many more things from Razib Khan in the future. [Have never seen a patronizing comment by Razib Khan.]

Welcome back Zachary Latif 🙂 Please bring some Persian cultured wisdom to us commoners.

Slapstik, we need our Pandit back!

Return to BP

I’ve been following this blog for many many years. It went dormant for a time, not officially, but the activity was far less than what I’ve noticed recently. Among the founders, Zach and Razib play different roles as hosts (i’ve always thought of Omar as a host as well!), and many of us access Razib’s content directly on his personal site or GNXP. Zach has been amiable and generous in his effort to engage participants in the comments over all these years. If he makes a controversial statement or feels he made an uncharitable judgement, he has the self awareness and good nature to correct course. Unlike some of us who are anonymous, he shares a bit of his personal life here, which makes it higher stakes in terms of personal reputation. Its one thing if someone calls girmit a moron,its another if someone calls my actual known self a moron. So decorum in addressing the “real” people is important. I’m not talking about the specific controversy that precipitated Zach’s departure, but just a general policy. Its not easy to sustain a platform like this, and it would really be a shame for this platform to lose his stewardship.

At times I suggest we acknowledge the host-guest relationship here. There will always be random hit and run commenters, but for those of us who participate more frequently, lets consider the fact that we didn’t create this forum. If we can reach an understanding on that, I think it could make a compelling case for his return.

I took a few days out and did some reflection. The Pakistani in me thrives on drama,the Persian in me repulsed by it. I guess that dichotomy is what Walt Whitman meant about contradicting oneself & having multitudes. I also realise I may come across as a flip flopper but then so be it, in these past few days I have crossed several years..

I hadn’t read the blog in the meantime not because I was upset but because I wanted to introspect.

I am just catching up (I had however checked out Kabir’s excellent review of a Suitable Boy). Girmit’s excellent comment above, on my goodbye post, summed up my feeling & situation though in this iteration Razib & Omar (or Omar & Razib) are primus inter pares, which is fine by me since they were able to reboot BP and I couldn’t.

Furthermore Razib & Omar are much more substantial writers than I am (so is Slapstick, after all he is the only true Pandit among us) whereas I veer towards the polemical, observational and sometimes outlandish.

However I cannot accept my comments being arbitrarily deleted; that is a red line if there ever was one (my opinions are not garbage, my time has some value). The other is abuse or disrespect (which we hadn’t got to but would probably have gotten there).

I’m not paid to write at BP, I do it because it’s fun (and a good stress buster) but also because I’m sentimentally invested in this blog. I do think (hope) that BP has the ability to influence desi discourse in the “Devil Wears Prada” model where our rather niche topics eventually percolates into more popular mediums but then again that may just be an idle fancy of mine.

As Girmit alludes above I’m quite transparent (overly so) about who I am and my life and my choices. The fact that I’m friendly with most of the authors (& friends with Kabir) goes at the heart of what I’m about so a little allowance has to be made that my online persona pretty much maps onto my real life person. This incessant need of mine to be liked (when I first joined social media for several years I would like everything in my newsfeed to avoid hurting people’s feelings until I realised what an idjot I was being) also means I’m not very good at handling dislike (I shirk from confrontation unless I absolutely have to; my best offence is usually defence).

Zachary Latif isn’t a handle, he’s a real little boy with feelings and ideas and dreams; who above all loves his wife and puppy. sometimes he gets it right, at other times he’s simply trying to figure stuff out.. so forgive him when he does get it wrong because he does actually mean well…

Where there is love, nothing is too much trouble and there is always time.

Abdu’l-Bahá

Review: Enter the Dragon. China’s undeclared war against the US in Korea

Russel Spurr was a British-Australian journalist who spent most of his life reporting from East Asia (20 years in Hong Kong), during which time he made many trips to China and Taiwan and interviewed multiple veterans of the Chinese intervention in Korea to write what was probably the first book covering the Korean war from the Chinese perspective (published in 1988). The book (Enter the Dragon. China’s undeclared war against the US in Korea 1950-51) provides a great introduction to the “other side” of the Korean conflict. Writing in journalistic style, he freely recreates conversations and scenes that obviously rely on accounts of survivors as well as his own imagination, but that does not mean he has not done his research. He knows his history and the bare facts are always accurate. And whatever the book lacks in typical military history details, it more than makes up in the form of vivid anecdotes that really bring the war to life. Continue reading Review: Enter the Dragon. China’s undeclared war against the US in Korea

Hindus/buddhists threat perception of christianity and islam.

This ofcouse was always the issue, which anyone in their minds would have known, but this is the first time someone mentioned it for what it was about.

 

Threat Perception among Hindu and Buddhist Nationalists

I am not quoting the text as I am not sure of the rules regarding that with this person and I am not too sure of the permission.

 

”

But I also think Western analysis (especially press coverage) of these movements sometimes misses a key aspect of how they see themselves – as defensive projects provoked by expansionistic, proselytizing religions while being subjected to the hypocrisy and double standards of bien-pensant elites. “

Male Misogyny

Please read this article in full:

Each of us has enabled the men who raped Asifa. I am tired of the posts on social media about being “heart-broken.” I no longer even feel the space in my chest where my heart should be. I am angry, and my anger is at aimed at you.

I will be 50 years old on Sunday. I lived 29 of those years in India. I was 8 years old when I was first sexually assaulted. Unlike Asifa, I wasn’t kidnapped and murdered. I lived to be sexually abused and assaulted multiple times, by men I knew, by strangers, by doctors, by faith healers, by the editor-in-chief of a major newspaper. I was 45 when I was last physically (not sexually) assaulted, by my brother, at his wedding, in full view of the wedding guests.

Nobody took a stand. None of these men was jailed. None was fired. None was shamed. None was named. Nobody walked out of the wedding in protest.

But there were consequences. India chose to turn its consequences on me. I was shamed, with love, for being an 8-year-old girl who was asking for it. I quickly internalized it. I believe even today that I should have been a different kind of child, hidden my legs as I played, been a little less proud of my pretty face, been a little more aware of my surroundings, a little less disabled so I could run. As an adult, in a high-ranking position in my journalism career, I was asked if the thing with the newspaper editor actually happened or if I’d imagined it (no matter that other women had charged him with similar abuse). I was locked up in a room at my brother’s wedding, “for my own safety”.

I was asked to apologize, to forgive, to forget, to draw upon my resources of compassion. I was asked, by all the family and friends I loved and still long for, to be a better Indian woman.

But let’s not make this about me. Let’s make this about you. Do you call out the violent tempers of the men around you or do you just get out of their way until they “calm down”? Do you step up and stick your neck out when a man or woman is deriding another woman/girl for being too sexy, too fat, too old, too progressive, too wanton, too transsexual, out too late, or in too long? Do you write that comment to shut down a good but sexist joke your popular and powerful male friend just posted on social media? Do you tell your son there will be consequences if he raises his voice, leave alone his hand, on his sister? Or do you ask him to “protect” her, as if she were a victim and he, her savior? Do you order him to get out of her way so she may grow so formidable that she will need no protecting? Do you pay your policemen and your lawmen to look the other way at your misdemeanors but punish the man who has no money for a bribe? Do you revere the “bad boy” movie star who was accused by multiple women of physical assault? Do you elect a prime minister who is charged with inciting a genocide against Muslims and then wonder why a little Muslim child was raped for days in a Hindu temple?

I am haunted by the cries I didn’t hear, of Asifa locked up in that Hindu temple. Our girls have been crying out for years, knocking to be let out from behind locked doors. The parents of Jyoti Singh, the medical student who was brutally gang-raped by five men on a Delhi bus in 2012 and thrown from the bus to later die, say that five years later, things have become worse for girls and women in India. The Dalit women among us have been warning us for decades that the rape of one of them will soon be the rape of one of us. But perhaps their faces are not light-skinned enough, their caste not high enough, their innocence not innocent enough to find their way in our news and social media feeds.

Yes, I am shaming you, on behalf of all the girls and all the old women in and from and with ties to India. Yes, I am blaming you for the childhood I had and the childhood Asifa lost. Yes, I know all the things even the most progressive among you whisper about the secrets some of us don’t keep. Quiet your whispers. Quiet your slogans. Go home and look your boys and men in the eye. Shut up and do the real work, India.

Continue reading Male Misogyny

Recent Spats

Just a few quick words about this iteration of Brownpundits and some recent spats here:

1. I have added a large number of authors and ALL those authors have the right to delete comments on their OWN posts. No one should be deleting comments on anyone else’s posts.
2. As far as possible, please try not to launch into personal attacks against other authors on the blog. Reasoned arguments are fine.
3. There is NO commitment on this blog that all posts will be in line with any particular ideology. Some authors love Pakistan, some don’t. Some are Islamophobic, some are very Islamophilic. Stick to reasoned argument as far as possible, and don’t lose your mind over perceived violations of this or that ideological purity test. No one is going to like every opinion. But all the authors have a right to their opinion. Feel free to argue with them, but there is NO policy of deleting posts unless they contain personal attacks or appeals to violence. As I said above, authors CAN censor comments on their own posts. In general, that is the only censorship on this site. VERY rare exceptions may occur, but none of the administrators have signed on to any general policy of censorship.

Try not to be too sensitive.
Cheers.

Brown Pundits