Brown Pundits

After my hiatus from BP I also stopped reading the other two blogs I follow (SS & GNXP). I was just wading back into them when I was confronted with the above and below.

I’m not comfortable with anti-Indian sentiments and it’s not only because my wife is Indian but that ultimately Brown has to stand with Brown (colonialism has already divided us far too much).

I don’t have context as I haven’t read the previous posts but I’m not liking the tenor of either the post above or the comment below; am I over-reacting??

I can say what u like about South Asia or even India because to some extent all of us in the blog (even Commentariat) is Indian by way of heritage.

We are the bastard spawn of the Aryan fathers & ASI mothers – well for our beautiful, fair & lovely Brahmins it would only be ASI grandmothers I guess 😉

“Civilised discussions of contentious ideas.”

Thankfully no one I know in real life reads BP so I can touch on some experiences.

One of the Bahais in my local community is an Ivy League overachiever. Really nice guy and we are good friends (we have an age gap of a decade; he is younger).

On one of our catchups my wife asked him some difficult questions about the Faith (alas we too have our skeletons but we don’t talk about it much).

He is a sparkling witty intellect but on this topic he just clamped up.

I remember when I was his age I was sitting in the house of a another good friend (frenemy). I made some remarks about Faith’s highest body (polite of course) but difficult topics. At a moment his mood flipped and he said if I continued he would ask me to leave.

The irony is that this devout chap is a notorious playboy but when it comes to the Faith he just couldn’t intellectually process “the difficult questions.”

That’s why I believers should be agnostics; it doesn’t mean we don’t believe but that we have to humility to know that we don’t actually know.

It would make for a much more civilised world..

A friend shared this on a WhatsApp group I manage (Pakistani Literatis):

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.

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.

Sometimes the overly indulgent class of people can also do some good. First Benefit Concert of its kind. And I dont think ravi shankar or even george harrison knew that it was Hindus who were being persecuted.

“my friend came to me with sadness in his eyes”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPRwzB_1YEk

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:

• Where do humans come from?
• Ancient Arya Culture

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!

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

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.

 

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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. “