Aasia Bibi case comes full circle (part 2)

AbdulMajeed Abid · November 22, 2018 · 5 comments

I showed up at the Institute of Peace and Secular Studies (IPSS) a few days after the rally. The person who had called the meeting was running late so I just loitered around. It was a two-room apartment that had been modified into a makeshift office space with some spare area for sitting, with floor cushions etc. There was a book rack full of books in one corner. The lady who managed the place was present there and said Hello. A few minutes after I had arrived, two boys a few years younger than me showed up as well. We started chit-chatting and it turned out that one of them was a student at LUMS and the other went to another private school. We were talking about democracy when they revealed that they were not in favor of democracy at all and then spent the next hour arguing why they thought so. They were under the influence of Hizb-ut-Tehrir, an Islamist organization that wanted to establish a caliphate. I tried to argue with them using rationality and logic but they were not willing to listen to a counter-argument and eventually stormed off. I discovered that IPSS was offering a short course in Political Economy and History and all I had to pay for was a copy of their syllabus.

Salmaan Taseer (ST) was a larger than life person. He grew up in a literary family, with his father passing away at an early age but the familial ties and his family’s social standing in the Lahori society gave him a footing in the tightly-knit hierarchy of Lahore’s elite circles. He was an active member of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) during its heyday, starting in 1968 and through Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s rule (1972-77). After Mr. Bhutto was hanged (1979) and PPP was under threat by Dictator Zia’s government, ST wrote a biography of Mr. Bhutto. I attended a talk by one of the fact checkers on ST’s book (at the cafe, Books n Beans, a small liberal enclave for such events) and she remembered how hard she had to work to meet ST’s standards. ST was instrumental in arranging for Benazir Bhutto’s arrival in Lahore in 1986 and the grand reception that ensued. He was elected in the PPP wave that swept most of Pakistan during the 1988 elections. He didn’t win another election in during the rest of his political life. However, he was considered PPP’s man in Lahore, someone who could take on the Sharif’s of PML(N). ST started an English daily in the early 2000s, called Daily Times (DT) which started with much fanfare and even had an Urdu counterpart. Continue reading Aasia Bibi case comes full circle (part 2)

RIP Fahmida Riaz

Omar Ali · November 21, 2018 · 15 comments

The poet and scholar Fahmida Riaz passed away today. She was known for her fearlessness and her willingness to call a spade a spade and she suffered for it (including an Indian exile during the Zia regime).

Here is Hasan Mujtaba’s poetic tribute to her:

سربکف سارے ستارے مشعلیں
اس کی آنکھوں میں جلوسوں کی طرح چل رہے تھے
جل رہے تھے جام سورج کی طرح سارے اسکے نام پر
اجرکوں کے رنگ سارے اسکی آنکھوں سے چراکر
تتلیاں لیکر اڑیں
دیس دیس دور دور
بچے اپنے ہاتھ مائوں سے چھپاتے پھر رہے تھے
رتجگوں میں بھکشوئوں کی ریت تھی
جیت تھی اسکے ماتھے پر لکھی
تاریخ کی خونی گلی میں
رات وہ مجھ کو ملی۔

Translation:

Severed head in hand

All the stars were like lamps marching in procession in her eyes

In her name, the wine-cups were circulating like the sun

Taking all the colors of the (Sindhi) Ajrak from her eyes

The butterflies took wing

From land to land and country to country

Children are hiding their hands from their mothers

All-nighters and the rites of bhikshus

Victory was written on her forehead

as in the blood soaked alleys of history

She met me..

Her poem Aqlima was translated by Ruchira Paul

Aklima
jo Habil aur Kabil ki maa jaani hai
maa jaani,
magar muqtalif
muqtalif beech raano ke
aur pistanon ki ubhaar mein
aur apne pait ke andar
aur kokh mein
is sab ki kismet kyun hai
ek farba bher ke bachche ki qurbani
woh apne badan ki qaidi
taptee hui dhoop mein jalte
teele par khadi hui hai
patthar par naksh banee hai
us naksh ko ghaur se dekho
lambee raano se upar
ubharte pistanon se upar
paicheeda kokh se upar
Aklima ka sar bhi hai
Allah kabhi Aklima se qalam karain
aur kuchh puchhain.

(Translation)
Aqlima..
Born of the same mother as Abel and Cain
Born of the same mother but different
Different between her thighs
Different in the swell of her breasts
Different inside her stomach
And her womb too
Why is the fate of her body
Like that of a well fed sacrificial lamb
She, a prisoner of that body
See her standing in the scorching sun on a smoldering hill
Casting a shadow that burns itself into the stones
Look at that shadow closely
Above the long thighs
Above the swelling breasts
Above the coils in her womb
Aklima also has a head
Let Allah have a conversation with Aklima
And ask her a few questions.
(Aklima was the lesser known offspring of Adam and Eve, the sister or Cain and Abel)

RIP.

 

Proud of Pakistan-

X.T.M · November 21, 2018 · 6 comments

https://twitter.com/khurram_dogar/status/1064797206023204864?s=21

I’ve been pretty upset with Pakistan because of Asia Bibi however this important news gives me hope for the Homeland.

The picture below (stolen off Omar’s feed) gives me hope about India’s Muslims.

These symbols are important since they signal society’s direction.

I will be honest I feel Indians & Hindus are forced to be far more liberal and enlightened than what their current Socio-economic level whereas Pakistanis are similarly forced to be much more conservative given their basic Indic Cultural orientation. Both will have much to learn and give one another if ever see an Anchsluss (since our Brave Pandit has started using Nazi analogies).

Sting of a WASP

X.T.M · November 21, 2018 · 29 comments

Late Addition:

https://twitter.com/vivekster/status/1065294025542926337?s=21

In the podcast Razib touched on Indian-American SJWs who he found offensive (I hope I’m not mixing or misquoting him). I am just shocked by the above tweet!

I am pro-Dalit and I stand with them. However India must not be humiliated by the West and follow China’s example.

The future doesn’t look good for India’s upper castes; they’ve migrated, intermarried or are barren.

The irony is that only the Parsis are allowed to “complain” or do something about their demographic survival.

But the same thing that’s happening to the Parsis is also happening to Kashmiri Pandits (my Pandit friend is one of 6 cousins who are in their 30/40’s and have two children between them), Sindhis and I’m sure other castes.

This constant vilification of the Upper Castes isn’t going to help India. It will make the UCs morph into the Western paradigm where UCs will split into the traditional conservatives and “woke whites.”

Yes there is something called noblesse oblige and the Indian elite have spectacularly failed in discharging it. However the new “check your privilege” is a hideous mutation of this ancient and aristocratic concept much as the current Lefty moral paranoia is simply neo-Puritanism.

As I said in the podcast Islam, Pakistan and Muslims attending not threats to India in a substantive manner. The India media has frothed over the mouth over the wrong enemy but the Hindu progressives have allied with colonial powers since the first British Invasion.

Yes caste, Sati and untouchability are all wrong but Hinduism would and could have corrected on it in its own right. Islam does many things badly but Muslims are embarking on an internal reformation. It may not work out but it’s worth a try.

An even better example are the Chinese; they’ve collectively fingered the world not only with prosperity but cohesiveness. Pakistan is now a satrapy of China at bargain bucket prices (Pakistan has clamped down on any meaningful debate on CPEC while staying Mum on the burning Uighur question).

India has to maintain her cohesiveness and I fear the external interference of Caste Wars will bring about another 2/3 centuries of ignominy. Power never relinquishes itself peacefully; we only became free because Britain & the West exhausted itself and its moral credibility in WW2 (the Elder Gods plunges themselves into Raganorak).

Why is India allowing foreign missionaries?

X.T.M · November 21, 2018 · 19 comments

Of course I’m sympathise with this earnest young missionaries passing however why is India allowing missionaries into the Andaman Islands. Continue reading Why is India allowing foreign missionaries?

Aasia Bibi case comes full circle(part 1)

AbdulMajeed Abid · November 21, 2018 · 32 comments

I have a special interest in Aasia Bibi’s case because it was the assassination of Salmaan Taseer that shook most of my worldview and lead me to a completely different path in life. It coincided with my political awakening. I was a 4th-year medical student at the time (January 2011) when the incident took place and I started my new journey. I grew up in a conservative, Salafi family in small town Punjab. I had always been a bookworm, interested in reading the news and reading all kinds of books (more in Urdu than English, mostly because books in Urdu were much more accessible to me). When my classmates in high school were busy memorizing textbooks for history, I was reading books in the school library that had not been read for ages (including both English and Urdu books). I was more interested in biographies and didn’t read (or had access to) books on politics and social sciences written in English. I was curious but didn’t have enough material to understand my own curiosity.

I was aware of the Aasia Bibi case and considered it a bigoted attempt by the village folk as a way to settle scores (not an uncommon occurrence in Punjab, my homeland). I was heartened to see Governor Taseer’s photos in the news when he visited Aasia. I had actually written a letter to Governor Taseer about some issue with our university exam (Governor of Punjab is the de facto Chancellor of all public universities in the province) a week before he was assassinated. From a political standpoint, I did not like him because he had been used by Zardari (President of Pakistan at the time and belonging to Pakistan Peoples Party-PPP) as a pawn to keep the PML(N) government in the bay. It was during this period that photos from some private events attended by the Taseer family were ‘leaked’ on social media. They showed the Taseer family in swimming pools and the ladies in swimsuits (which was considered too much skin). Those photos were circulated on Facebook and then on news channels by both PML(N) folks and later by the religious right which had started calling for Salmaan Taseer’s head after he visited Aasia in jail.

At the beginning of January 2011, I had taken part in an inter-collegiate competition taking place in Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and was still living in the slightly less-bigoted mindset that was present in LUMS. The assassination on January 4th, 2011 took place a day after I came back from LUMS. A few short years before that, Lawyers movement (2007-08) had swept urban parts of Pakistan in a frenzy and it felt like a new era for raising your voice, to demand greater freedoms. Some of my friends from high school had played an active role in the movement and LUMS had been a citadel of resistance during those days. The band, Laal (meaning Red) had sung some of Faiz Ahmad Faiz’s poems and made a wonderful video talking about protest. After 8 years of Musharraf’s ‘hung democracy’, the politico were back in action. (Side Note: for admission to 11th grade in a military-run boarding school, I had to write an essay on demoracy in pakistan (in 2004) and I used the words ‘hung democracy’ in my essay. I got admitted. Omar Ali of BP went to the same school.) There used to be a ‘study circle’ oraganised by some LUMS students (current and former), who had taken active part in the Lawyers movement, at a place on Jail Road, Lahore near my hostel which I had attended twice. During one of the sessions, Ashar Rehman (Taimoor Rehman-of Laal’s uncle and brother of Rashid Rehman, editor of Daily Times) talked about his days fighting alongside the Baloch against the Pakistan army and how he learned tactics of guerrila war from Che Guevara’s books. At the other session, a lady who used to be active in leftist circles in the 1940s (I believe it was Tahira Mazhar Ali, Tariq Ali’s mother) talked about the freedom she enjoyed in those times, roaming Lahore in her tonga. Continue reading Aasia Bibi case comes full circle(part 1)

Smash the Brahmanical Patriarchy

X.T.M · November 20, 2018 · 58 comments

Above Ellen Pompeo talks about the burdens of being an Elder Race..

Thoughts on the biggest issue rocking Indian Twitter?

* Jack Dorsey and Lewis Hamilton must be slapped with lifetime bans to India.

* the Indian government must suspend all Twitter accounts and F1 racing (Mercedes should be banned).

* Any apology must show absolutely contrition and anyone demonstrating Coloniser Privilege should be publicly shamed.

I saw Jack D’s twitter page; his appropriation of Dharmic motifs is simply shameful. As if his ancestors did not cause enough havoc to our beloved lands with their divide and rule and other such nonsense.

In fact there is good argument that it was British who had a very keen interest in reviving caste. Admittedly caste goes back to the very early genesis of what it means to be Indian (much like the gods our tripartite heritage of Aryan, Dravidian & Aboriginal).

Of course I’m projecting an extraordinarily “Pakistani approach” but for Pakis we live and die by Izzat. Partition was also the loss of a mindset as well as everything else; the one where honor comes before all else..

Have we seen the face of Rama?

Razib Khan · November 20, 2018 · 52 comments


One of the problems with looking up pictures of the Kalash people of Pakistan is that photographers have a bias toward highlighting the most European-looking villagers. Let’s call this “Rudyard Kipling Lost White Races” syndrome. Therefore for your edification, I post the YouTube above which is probably more representative of what the Kalash look like.

The reason I post a link to what the Kalash look like is that it is germane to the answer to the question: what did the Indo-Aryans look like? The past tense is key since “Indo-Aryans” today means a lot of people in South Asia, in a literal sense.

In the post below Zach L. made a passing comment:

(1.) The AASI’s, which are sort of co-equivalent to the Negritos and Anadamese Islanders (one of the first coastal waves out of Africa that somehow also ended up in the Amazon). It’s interesting that they are substrate to every South Asian population (I think there are trace amounts in Central Asia, Afghanistan and even Iran).

(2.) the “Dravidian” farmers out of Iran. They are probably related to the J1/J2 types and might be an olive skinned population. Prominent in Sindh and Southern Pakistan through to South India (high % in Gujarat – must have been a locus of some sort).

(3.) our beloved Aryans who are especially prevalent among Brahmins, the Punjab and Haryana (though arguably the Haryanvis and East Punjab descend from Scythians to some extent). These look “European” but it’s a very different look to #2.

The Aryans are conventional European (light eyes, light hair, white skin) the ancient Dravidians would have (probably) looked like Middle Easterners (olive skin, dark hair dark eyes) and the AASI, ” looks like Papua New Guineans.

I can’t see any disagreement with point number two.

As for the AASI (“Ancient Ancestral South Indians”), we need to be careful here. They diverged from the ancestors of the people of Papua New Guinea ~40-50 thousand years ago. The divergence from the Andamanese, who probably migrated from mainland Southeast Asia, was not too much later. Aside from being very dark-skinned, the various extant “Australasian” people can be quite distinctive in appearance. The people of Papua, and native Australians, are quite robust. A substantial minority have blonde hair color due to a mutation common among Oceanians. The “Negrito” people of Southeast Asia and India all seem to be have adapted to a narrow relic niche, and may not be representative of their ancestors.

That being said, there is a particular non-West Eurasian look that many South Asians have which we can presume is the heritage of the AASI.

The comment about Aryans looking like Europeans raised my eyebrows a bit. This is a touchy subject, and to be honest my initial reaction was to be skeptical. But the more I read the primary literature to check up on Zach, the more reasonable this seemed to be. The dominant steppe signal into South Asia does resemble the people who were pushing into Central and Western Europe 1,000 years earlier than the Indo-Aryans, who were moving southward probably ~3,500 years ago. This is clear in rather simple statistical genetic analyses-populations such as the Kalash and Pathans for example show strong evidence of “European-like” gene flow.

Current work out of David Reich’s lab suggests that the Kalash are the best modern proxies we have for the “Ancestral North Indians,” the ANI. This population is modeled as:

– ~30% “steppe”, which is very similar to the ancestry which expaned westward into Europe between 3000 and 2500 BCE
– ~70% “Indus Periphery”, which seems the likely ancestral contribution of the people of the IVC, and is a heterogenous mix of Iranian-farmer and AASI

The mid-range estimate for the emergence of the Kalash mix is ~2,500 years before the present, but these usually have some downward bias, so it is reasonable that it would be greater than ~3,000 years. The samples from the Swat Valley dating to this period show gradual increase of “steppe” ancestry over time.

So one reason to be skeptical that the Indo-Aryans were “European-like” in appearance is that by the time they were flourishing in the lands previous inhabited by the IVC they may already have been more than 50% genetically like the people of the IVC. In which case, a minority would be very European-looking, but most would look vaguely West Asia, with some looking more stereotypically South Asian. If you look at the video above I think you do see the Kalash look this way.

One reason I’ve always been skeptical of the idea that the Indo-Aryans looked European, or, that their demographic impact was large, is that it seemed unlike both could be true. The expression of blue eyes among Indians was too low of a percentage.

Here is the frequency at a major SNP which predicts a lot of the blue vs. brown eye color.

Continue reading Have we seen the face of Rama?

Brown Pundits