I’m just shocked to read this, how idiotic of the Baha’is to lose out on the body of one of India’s greatest authors!

Typical Persian arrogance; I’m actually upset since this would have been such a Kudos to the Faith in Asia. Khushwant Singh was an incredible intellectual and one of the literary Lions of the Punjab.

It’s deeply insulting to have insisted on burying him in a row when common decency would have been to reserve him a distinguished honour. As I was telling V this is the silent racism endemic to the Baha’i community. The largest believers in the world are in India but the UHJ (Universal House of Justice) has only one Desi out of 9.

The Persians and the Persianate believers (lots of Desis become Persianised) owe an explanation for this; utter stupidity because of callous racism and fanaticism.

I used to be keen on a burial because with a burial you give back to the earth what you have taken. Now, it will be the electric crematorium. I had requested the management of the Bahai faith if I could be buried. Initially, they had agreed, but then they came up with all sorts of conditions and rules. I had wanted to be buried in one corner with just a peepal tree next to my grave. After okaying this, the management later said that that wouldn’t be possible and that my grave would be in the middle of a row and not in a corner. I wasn’t okay with that—even though I know that once you are dead it makes no difference. But I was keen to be buried in one corner. They also told me later that they would chant some prayers, which again I couldn’t agree with, because I don’t believe in religion or in religious rituals of any kind.

How To Live & Die

I did a mini-gasp on social media when I saw Drew check in “Azad Kashmir.” Surely he would have been aware of the hyper-political language.

I would like to call him a Coloniser but since I’m in Turanian, rather than Tharoorian, phase at the moment; he’s one of the good guys.

PewDiePie on the other is a racist low-class wannabe Coloniser..

Also (related but not really):

India in 2019: 1. Nehru’s great-granddaughter signals that her family still follows obscure Kashmiri Brahmin custom. 2. Apparently manages to get the festival’s name wrong. 3. Person handling Twitter account doesn’t know how to use apostrophes. https://t.co/DRuyW5HR0H

— Sadanand Dhume (@dhume) April 6, 2019

My friend MJ has an interesting piece on Why we need National Continuity.

I was also reading an article about the lack of a “national party in India” (Modi versus 20 states) but I found the comment to the post excerpted below to be very interesting and well-written.

A paen to a very different type of India. As in all things the labels Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan are very muddled because they are ultimately foreign labels. But that is not the point of the post or the comment below but rather that there are many many types of Indias not just Modi’s Bharat.

I was a bit surprised that Telangana is divided up between Rao and Reddy, to India’s credit it has funnelled the caste divides into a democratic framework (casteocracy can work). In some forms of culture South Asia is probably the most conservative region on earth since culture is essentially distributed into each caste and clan. The family networks haven’t nuclearised yet and without atomisation, Westernisation is somewhat harder to achieve.

Mr Gupta’s articulation is absolutely in line with what India is. I only hope he believes in the India that is and articulates more strongly and more often about this India. Not the India that is being projected to us by ‘pretending to be independent’ darbari (but really sarkari channels and papers) channels but who depend on the government for advertisement money. 

We are a country where the language/dialect varies by district in many cases. If we try distinguishing regions based on multiple factors, India is a combination of few hundred states. We have multiple new years. Some of us revolve our lives around the sun and others around the moon. That itself tell us, how diverse we are. We have common festivals but they are celebrated for different reasons – sometimes very different reasons. How can then our politics be led by one fellow, who thinks of himself no less than God or who is positioned by the darbaris as the reincarnation of God. Given that the God has created us to be different, what business does a self-serving politician or the darbaris have to tell us how to live our life? We are largely independent thinking and that is why no effort at assimilation in the past has succeeded. What does it tell us about who we are? Not to mention that our geography is that of a continent and our economic opportunities vary significantly. 

Not everyone can or has to become one kind of citizen – thinking the same way.  Continue reading Many types of India prepare to Vote

I think Ta’arof translates into Takaluf in the Urdu speaking world but I can’t be sure.

I find it rather amusing that while India is being dissed on the world’s most popular youtube channel; a Jewish American travelloger is extolling Pakistan to the skies.

If Vidhi wasn’t Indian then I can take some schadenfraude but considering she is a daughter of the Indus, and her tribe are exiles from Pakistan, they are the best type of Pakistanis; those that are entirely free from the taint of Islam. Continue reading Misunderstanding Ta’arof