The Dalits need no religion

March 23, 2014 Brown Pundits Archive No Comments filed under Archived Authors

Behenji (dear sister) Mayawati hates (justifiably) the Hindu caste system with every fiber of her body.

The famous slogan of Kanshi Ram (her mentor) was : Tilak, taraju aur talwar, unko maro juthe char (Brahmins, Baniyas and Khatriyas should be given a good kick).

One of the pressing problems facing India (as our overlords see it) is the religious affiliation of the dalits and tribals which will translate into muscle power and as cannon fodder. They are officially listed as (mostly) Hindus.

In Maharashtra a section of dalits have adopted neo-Buddhism (with all the rituals of Hinduism extending to idolatry). The dalit army is named Bhim-Sena after Bhima of Mahabharata who married a dalit lady (Hidimbi) and had a valiant progeny (Ghatot-kacha).

We believe this strategy kills two birds with one stone- it establishes Dalits in the Dharmic sphere and embeds them firmly in the fold of Indian mythology and culture (as the original Indians even). This also achieves a degree of separation with the foreign origin religions/cultures of Islam and Christianity.

While RSS and other Hindutva organizations may not be pleased by this strategy of subversion there is little they can do about it. And as far as the eager-to-convert emissaries of desert religions are concerned, their talking points dont work against the (supposedly) egalitarian Buddhism. And the foreign origin point is un-answerable.

Thus just like all forms of carbon will eventually convert into diamond, Buddhism should be the default religion of all Indians. Presumably this is what Mayawati would wish for but for now she needs the Brahmins on board to defeat the pesky Shudras. This is why she has
a (successfully tested) reservations carrot for the upper-caste (economically
backward) folks as well. It is her own special form of Marxism- class equations merged with caste equations.

In conclusion electoral compulsions has forced Behenji to be a sister for the Tilaks aka Brahmins instead of kicking them into the mud. Another magical aspect of the (bottoms up) social revolution.
…
BSP
supremo Mayawati on Sunday slammed religious conversion and asked
members of weaker sections, dalits and tribals to change the government
instead of their religions. “I understand that people from BJP
and RSS visit remote areas of Odisha and persuade adivasis and dalits to
go for reconversion in order to change their living standards. I am
telling you not to change religion, but governments both in the state
and the Centre,” Mayawati told a public meeting.

Stating that
about 50% of Odisha’s population comprised tribals and dalits, Mayawati
said there had been no development of poor people even 65 years after
Independence. She also highlighted the plights of poor people among the
upper caste communities.

Blaming the economic policies of both
Congress led UPA government and previous BJP led NDA regime at the
Centre, she said “while a huge amount of black money is stashed in
foreign banks neither Congress nor BJP had made any effort to bring it
back.”

“If the black money is brought back, most of the
problems faced by the poor, dalits and tribals would be over for all
time to come. But, those in power don’t take such step,” she said.

Holding poverty and unemployment responsible for the growth of left
wing extremism, Mayawati said the Maoist menace would certainly come
down if the government took steps to uplift the poor members of the
society.

She said Odisha remained poor and backward for ages
due to faulty policies of successive governments in the state and the
Centre. “We will fulfill Odisha’s demand of a special category State
status if voted to power in Centre,” Mayawati said.

“We have
reduced poverty in Uttar Pradesh and distributed unutilized government
land to landless people. Same can be done in Odisha and elsewhere,” she
said.

Appealing to people to vote for BSP candidates in the
ensuing twin polls, Mayawati said “we do not have alliance with anyone
in the state. BSP has put candidates in all the 21 Lok Sabha and 147
assembly segments of Odisha.”

On the thin attendance in her
first public meeting here, Mayawati said she was happy that poor people
attended the BSP rally. “We do not bring people by bus or train to show
fake strength. I am happy that so many people attended the meeting
despite scorching heat,” she said.

regards

“…abundance of everything but …no izzat”

March 23, 2014 Brown Pundits Archive No Comments filed under Archived Authors

At the end of the day everything boils down to izzat. And izzat is tied up with how your women behave. If the castes inter-mingle the position of the elites become untenable.

During British rule it was clear that the Englishman was the top caste in India. One of the most important ways to preserve their reputation was to never never allow white women to come into contact with the darkies. However World War I created a crisis that was not easily resolved. And ultimately the lost British prestige was the starting point for the movement for independence.

…

“If you want any French women, there
are plenty here and they are very good looking,” wrote a rather excited young
soldier to a friend in the Punjab. He was not alone. From the first deployment
of the Indian Expeditionary Force to France in 1914, the Indians proved
extremely popular with European ladies and the feeling was often mutual. Their
presence in large numbers (some 90,000 Indians were deployed to the theatre),
their distinctive appearance and good manners made them a magnet for local
women.

When these same sepoys were invalided to Britain, as many were for
treatment and convalescence, their reception was much the same. In seaside towns
along the south coast, where most of the hospitals for Indians were located,
convalescent sepoys and their Indian carers were objects of fascination for the
English ladies. “Brighton is covered with girls who make a lot of the natives,”
wrote a British hospital orderly to his wife in the spring of 1915, adding
that, “They are to be seen arm in arm with ward servants and are very fond of
coloured people.”

The reaction of the Indians varied.
“The women have no modesty,” wrote Surjan Singh, a patient in Brighton’s
Kitchener Hospital, “but walk with the men who please them most.” Another
patient declared in a letter to his brother, “There are lots of women to be
had. They write letters to us to come to their house and have food with them,
and that we can get a woman. I am very much confused in mind.” But most had
fewer reservations: “I am very happy in this place,” wrote one Sikh patient,
with obvious enthusiasm.

It goes without saying that the
military authorities were not best pleased with this situation. Foremost in
their minds was the thought that sexual and even romantic relationships between
British women and Indians would diminish the izzat—dignity—of the Raj. Sepoys’
letters referring to the ready availability of white women were usually
censored and, for the same reasons, female English or European nurses were
almost never employed in Indian hospitals in either Britain or France. British
commanders and senior politicians knew well that liaisons between Indian
soldiers and white women could wreck the carefully constructed mythology of
racial distinctiveness.

But British women, in India at
least, were generally beyond the reach of Indian men, for they tended to be of
the “better sort”—the wives of officers and administrators, or perhaps pious
missionaries. Encountering a white woman who did not fit the constructed image
of the self-disciplined, morally upright memsahib was obviously as much a
revelation to Indians as much as it was a worry for the British elite.
Most of the women attracted to Indian soldiers in France and Britain were from
the working or lower middle classes. They showed little in the way of prejudice
towards Indians and their familiarity was clearly unsettling to those further
up the social scale. Commanders feared that this familiarity would undermine
the sedulously constructed barriers and hierarchies that separated troops drawn
from the colonies from white British troops. Moreover, it shook the very
foundations of Empire. Would Indians—indeed those on whom the British
ultimately depended to police their Empire—ever see the British in the same
light again? The mask of racial distinctiveness was slipping forever and
drastic action needed to be taken.

The military authorities in Britain
and France were now determined to do all that they could to prevent
un-trammelled liaisons between Indian soldiers and European women. In the
spring of 1915, the commandant of the Kitchener Hospital in Brighton, Colonel
Bruce Seton, ordered all Indian hospital staff to remain within the compound.
The same was true of patients, with the exception of a few convalescent
officers and warrant officers, who were sometimes issued with restricted passes
to visit the town. But as Seton readily acknowledged, the confinement of some
600 Indian patients and staff within the hospital area was “no easy matter”.
The brick walls had to be supplemented with barbed-wire palings and a police
guard was placed around the perimeter. Similar precautions were taken elsewhere
in England and, as far as possible, in France.

These restrictions were deeply resented
by soldiers who had grown accustomed to a measure of freedom. “They do not let
us out to the bazaars,” protested one patient to a comrade in the 40th Pathans.
“They do not let the French or English girls talk to us, nor do they let us
talk to them. The English have become very bad. They have become dogs. Our Indian soldiers are very much oppressed, but they can do nothing. There is
abundance of everything but there is no izzat.”

In one notable case, this anger
found an outlet in violence. An Indian Sub-Assistant Surgeon, who had been
working in a hospital along the coast in Bournemouth, burst into Seton’s office
and attempted to shoot him with his revolver. He missed and was subjected to
seven years’ rigorous imprisonment.

regards

Caste (and sect) of dead people?

March 21, 2014 Brown Pundits Archive No Comments filed under Archived Authors

A good question indeed. Samuel Kuruvilla tries to explain the dilemma faced by the fishermen community of Kerala. He is also clear minded about the playbook followed by the Italians and wants justice for the dead. It is after all not that complicated at all.

(This article was posted back in 2012. In Feb 2014, two years after the incident, it is reported that the families of the dead fishermen have decided to forgive the murderers. It is possible that social pressure was instrumental in this decision making where blood money will help pay for freedom. Perhaps some one should determine the extent of appreciation in value of (thirty pieces of) silver over a period of 2000 years.

….

The Italians are actively pursuing the
Church angle, given historic Italian and Vatican linkages with the Latin and
Roman Catholic Churches in Kerala.

Kerala is practically the only State in
India that has a plethora of autonomous Catholic rites predominantly composed
of members of one particular community or caste. While the Syrian Christians
are represented by two autonomous churches under the suzerainty of Rome, the
Syro-Malabar and the Syro-Malankar, the ‘new’ converted Christians in the
Catholic fold are represented by the Latin Catholic Church that functions under
the direct authority of the See of Rome. It is to this Church that both the
dead fishermen belong to and this Church was mentored, developed and governed
till around over half-a-decade ago by the Italian Bishops only.

However, the Catholic Church in
Kerala has been forced to keep out of the controversy given the serious nature
of the issue as well as the competing jurisdictions of three different Catholic
rites in Kerala, each with a different heritage while all owing ultimate
allegiance to the See of Rome.

Caste politics has also played a role in this
issue, with the dominant Catholic rite in Kerala being predominantly composed
of the upper-caste Syrian Christians, while the ‘Latin’ Catholic Church in
Kerala was predominantly composed of people from the ‘oppressed’ classes of
Kerala that had converted to Christianity to escape the rigid Kerala caste
system over the last couple of centuries.

In fact when the recently crowned
‘Cardinal’ of the Syrian Catholic Church, Mar George Alenchery, who happened to
be in Rome attending his Cardinal investiture ceremony, when the incident took
place in Kerala, offered his good offices as a mediator between the
Italians-Vatican and the fisherman community in Kerala, there was an immediate
backlash with the Latin Catholic Church asking the Syrian Bishop to keep his hands
off the issue which concerned their own flock and not his.

Given the
sensitivities of the people and particularly that of the ‘Mukuva’ community to
which both the fishermen belonged too, there is a limit beyond which the Church
cannot and will not go, at the risk of being branded anti-national and agents
of a foreign power.

The Chief Minister, himself an upper-caste Syrian Christian, has gone on record
as stating that the two erring Italian servicemen need expect no leniency from
the courts.

The whole issue, other than the
immense tragedy that the loss of two young working men’s lives has meant to
their respective families as well as to the state, both the Centre as well as
Kerala, that saw a foreign power commit coldblooded, albeit possibly not
premeditated, murder at our own doorstep, has highlighted the extent to which
the Western powers and in particular the Western ‘Christian’ powers are
prepared to use old colonial ‘religious’ linkages for their present convenience
and benefit, as and when the opportunity arises for them to do so.

If this wanton act of aggression
against our nationals on our own coastline and well within our exclusive
economic zone is not punished as befitting our present power and status, other
nations will also be tempted to repeat the same along our coasts in the name of
combating piracy or even worse.

The law must be allowed take its course as
regards the two Italian servicemen who killed our citizens along the coast of
Kerala on the night of February 15, 2012.

regards

An advocate for “radical social transformation”

March 15, 2014 Brown Pundits Archive No Comments filed under Archived Authors

Saroj Giri is passionate about bringing back the blood-red (in a non-pejorative sense) left and is clear that the best way to fight communalism is through “radical social transformation.” .But he does not say where lies the magic wand that will drive the masses back into the fold of the left.

It was a point of pride for the left in India that they are the true secularists as well as above dirty caste politics (the left will at best acknowledge that class is caste). The left was (as usual) mainly ruled by the super-castes – EMS Namboodiripad belonged to the cream of the cream (the Kedarnath shrine in the Himalayas can have only Namboodiri priests. But there were also powerful leaders from so-called backward backgrounds as well, including the formidable VS Achuthanandan, the prince of the Ezhavas.

Good governance in the rule-book of the left used to mean no communal riots and (in earlier times) no corruption. But then the left in India became part of the ruling class and became corrupted. This had been predicted by the left’s own theoreticians who preferred to usher in the red revolution. Unfortunately revolutions aka “radical social transformation” is hard work, you have to kill of millions of people, deport others to gulags, and re-educate all the peasants. And after all the hard work they may still dump you for the promise of a nice pair of jeans.Shameful ingratitude indeed.

As the masses have abandoned the left, all one can do now is to cry over split milk and sneer at the “low information” voters. This is the tragedy of the left in India and elsewhere.
..
A
game-changing equation is being suggested here: that even those who do not
explicitly endorse majoritarian Hindu sentiments will vote for Hindutva—all
thanks to the new agenda of opposing vote bank politics, fighting corruption,
what goes around in the name of say good governance.

Here we can do well to recall Praveen Togadia’s tweet that Hindutva followers should not
be too opposed to Modi ordering the arrest of Bajrang Dal activists (they were
arrested on August 20th, 2013, by Gujarat Police after they had vandalized an
art exhibition in Ahmedabad which included art exhibits from Pakistani
artists). The reason Togadia provided: ‘Let him add secular votes’.

The RSS functionary’s views assumes a particular understanding of the Indian
voter for whom fighting vote bank politics and pitching for good governance
becomes more important than fighting the dangers of Hindutva politics. This
points to one emerging affinity in Indian politics today: that the wider agenda
of good governance and anti-corruption is compatible with Hindutva, that, for
example, fighting corruption is in sync with supporting Modi’s Hindutva. The
mainstream fight against corruption today might deliver itself at the feet of
Modi’s Hindutva.

How is this possible? How is it possible that Hindutva’s communal
polarisation often leading to communal riots and breakdown of the rule of law
becomes compatible with good governance? We get some answers through a close
reading of the recent riots in Muzaffarnagar (Sep 2013) and in fact its (non-)
resonance in wider Indian politics.

Muzaffarnagar pointed towards a new kind of riots. The strategy there seems
to follow from the ‘lessons learned’ from what ‘went wrong’ in Gujarat 2002,
where the high number of Muslims killed (790) attracted enormous press and
civil society attention around the world, and created a political albatross
that dogs Modi to this day.
Hence keep the number of actual killings low and
instead compensate for that by increasing those displaced and uprooted from
their land and homes—clearly the pattern in Muzaffarnagar riots, where the
thrust was on displacing Muslims (50,000), shattering their economic base and
means of livelihood, rather than on killings per se (‘only’ 37 Muslims killed).

The trick: keep communal polarisation low profile or low intensity and keep
chanting the mantra of development and governance!

Now many, among them ardent secularists and leftists, welcome this new
agenda of politics while opposing Modi/BJP. They think of good governance as
rightly taking us away from divisive issues and communal or vote bank politics
and open the way towards a more enlightened, rational politics based on genuine
issues of development and governance. A Muslim as much as a Dalit or an upper
caste Hindu or a jhuggi dweller all want basic amenities like water,
electricity, good schools—they all want good governance, don’t they?

So if only we could stop Modi or the BJP from coming to power, this agenda
is in itself very positive! It is by dint of this logic that scores of
secularist or left-leaning activists and academics have joined AAP which in
many ways is spearheading the good governance crusade. And yet in terms of its
articulation, effects and ramifications, the new agenda seems already set in
its affinity with communal politics. This is reflected in, say, AAP’s coyness
when it comes to talking about communalism. Their insistence that they are not
about vote banks so often seems to be a way to duck communal issues, a
hesitation to take on communalism—and definitely overlook its affinity with
good governance.

Here we notice a major structural shift in Indian politics. This means that
Indian politics’ umbilical cord with communal politics and riots is magically
rendered invisible by the cunning discourse of good governance, transparency
and anti-corruption. Only a politics of radical social transformation can
dislodge this bonhomie of good governance and communalism.
.
regards

A glimpse of Pakistan and her castes.

March 10, 2014 Brown Pundits Archive No Comments filed under Archived Authors

FAB story #2: Imad Uddin Ahmed from Lahore, Pakistan, writes:

Until I moved to Pakistan for a few years after
graduating from college in California, I wouldn’t say that I
saw my Indian or Indian diaspora friends as anything other than fellow South
Asians – brown brothers and sisters who had similar tastes and values, but who
supported the wrong cricket team and prayed in a different way.

In Pakistan, I inquired and discovered what caste
my Hindu ancestors belonged to, having been asked by a colleague on my first
day at work (at a women’s rights NGO!)

In Pakistan, I learned the South Asian prejudices
that South Asian beauty was predicated on a light skin-tone and, for men, sharp
features and height. I learnt too that these features were associated with
higher caste Indians and with Muslims – descendants of invaders were regarded
as more beautiful than the indigenous people who had constructed the Indus’
most ancient civilisations. Why, then, the likes of Shiv Sena only target
Muslims in India as foreigners (many of whose ancestors were Hindu), seems a
bit arbitrary. It was in Pakistan that I learnt how, in spite of inhabiting an
Islamic republic, Pakistanis carried forth their un-Islamic caste prejudices,
and that these prejudices allowed many of us to feel superior. By learning how
somewhat physically different we were from many Indians, I also learnt how
similar our mentalities were to my image of them.

For all the prejudices I ridiculed, I started
subconsciously imbibing them, and my recent friendships with Indians and Hindus
have been coloured by them. Where I previously had yearned for dark and lovely
South Asian girls, I started favouring the light-skinned ones, and I’ve enjoyed
teasing Brahmin girls I’ve dated that they had lost their caste. (Apparently
for fear of losing hers, one of my ancestors refused to share the crockery her
son had used, let alone hug him, once he had converted to Islam.) I now guess
(to myself) a person’s caste by considering their surname and looks, and try to
figure out whether their life choices (profession, partner, extra-curricular
activities) have been affected by it.

Hussein (name changed to protect privacy) was the
first Indian friend I had made since I had started living in Pakistan. We
connected through blogging while I was in Lahore and he was in Mumbai.

We were initially drawn to each other by a
fascination with each other’s otherness. He wanted to know what Pakistan was
like, his thirst having been whet by a book called Husband of a Fanatic about
my (and Amitava Kumar’s) relatives in Pakistan, and about Hindu extremism in
India. I had never known a Muslim Indian, and wanted to know whether he felt
marginalised, what his daily struggles were and which cricket team he
supported. (I myself failed Norman Tebbit’s test of being a true Brit for
failing to support England.)

When we finally became friends in the UK, he shared
with me Tehelka’s coverage of the 2002 Gujarat riots, and then details of his
own tragic loss in those riots.

Despite seeing an indecent proportion of his
compatriots support the man responsible for inciting those riots, he tells me
that he is glad that his grandparents didn’t cross the border – I understand
his view: whereas in India, you aren’t safe being a Muslim, in Pakistan you
aren’t safe being the wrong type of Muslim. Pakistan and India aren’t too
dissimilar.

About the author: Imaduddin Ahmed is a Pakistani
and British Public Private Partnerships financial transactions advisor in
Rwanda. He has blogged as ‘The Lost Pakistani’ for GQ India and co-authored
with Kapil Komireddi ‘Pakistan, rebranded’ for The Boston Globe, as well as
opinion editorials and comment pieces for the global edition of The New York
Times, Internationale Politik, The Guardian, The East African, The Friday Times
of Pakistan and New Strait Times.

Photo credit: Asim Rafiqui

Democracy against Brahmins

March 7, 2014 Brown Pundits Archive 2 Comments filed under Archived Authors

From appearances it looks like California now has a Brahmin (Asian) problem. Historically, the ancestors of Karthick Ramakrishnan have enjoyed their position at the top of the social pyramid in Dravida-Nadu.

Then came democracy (and more importantly the social justice movement) and the Brahmins (aka northern invaders) were driven away to the North, West, and Eastern corners of India, as a consequence of the (in)famous 69% reservation policy [ref. wiki]. The history of quotas and various arguments for/against are debated in this article. There is no doubt that reservations help seed a creamy layer in each category (which may or may not benefit the less well off people in the same categories). All in all about 80% of Tamil Nadu population are said to be protected by reservations.

Main Category as per Government of Tamil Nadu	Sub Category as per Government of Tamil Nadu	Reservation Percentage for each Sub Category as per Government of Tamil Nadu	Reservation Percentage for each Main Category as per Government of Tamil Nadu	Category as per Government of India
Backward Class (BC)	Backward Class (BC) – General	26.5%	30%	Other Backward Class
Backward Class (BC)	Backward Class (BC) – Muslims	3.5%	30%
Most Backward Class (MBC)			20%
Denotified Community (DCN)			20%
Scheduled Castes	Only Scheduled Castes	15%	18%	Scheduled castes and scheduled tribes
Scheduled Castes	only for Arunthathiyar)	3%	18%
Scheduled Tribes			1
Total Reservation Percentage			69%

But the great northbound movement proved only to be a temporary respite. The quota battles spread out to the north as well, though settling at a lower level of 49.5% for now (more importantly enforcement was better than before, as Shudras and Dalits came to power on their own steam). The next (logical) step for many of these Brahmins was to move out from Sharat Bose Avenue (Kolkata), Ramakrishna Puram (Delhi) and Matunga (Mumbai) to the green(er) pastures of the West where (apparently) meritocracy still prevailed in California, enshrined via the equally (in)famous Proposition 209. Asians of many stripes (driven to excel by the Tiger Mother syndrome) managed to take advantage of race-neutral admission policies and savoured the model minority badge from the white majority (who used the MM stick to beat up the blacks/latinos).

However democracy has now managed to catch up with the super-castes in California as well. The game changer (as KR reports below) is that whites who resented preferences for blacks in the 1990s are now resentful of asians (mostly Chinese but I would imagine also Koreans and Indians) for the sin of grabbing too many university seats. The dreaded specter of quota being (sort of) tied to population percentages has been raised. Once that genie is out of the bottle it will not be possible to push it back. Even if the Asians manage to win a few battles they will surely lose the war (one problem is that Asians are not all equally doing well- Pacific Islanders and Laotians for example). The 10% will inevitably need to bow before the heft of the 90%. The logic of democracy is relentless (and it is how it should be). For the super-castes there will be now no more place on earth to run (and to hide). For folks like Karthick Ramakrishnan, the writing on the wall (and the desperate anguish reflected in his writing) is clear.

Is the debate on affirmative action versus race-blind policies mainly
about principle, or mostly about preserving narrow group interests? We
are beginning to find out in California. A bill passed by the state
Senate and pending in the Assembly would put a constitutional amendment
on the ballot that would overturn portions of Proposition 209 to exempt
public college and university admissions from the ban on racial, ethnic
and gender preferences.

Interestingly, many of these fears are emanating not from
conservative white voters but from a few vocal Asian American
organizations. National advocacy groups such as the 80-20 Political
Action Committee, editorial writers in Chinese-language newspapers and
activists from Chinese-language schools have begun to bombard Assembly
members, urging them to vote against restoring affirmative action. They
worry that Asian American students, who saw a sizable increase in UC
enrollment following 209’s ban on affirmative action in 1996, will see a
big drop in enrollment if affirmative action is restored.

Just as important, the focus on narrow group interests might also
change the opinions of white voters in California in surprising ways.When whites voted overwhelmingly against affirmative action in 1996,
the UC admission rates for whites and Asian Americans were roughly
equal, at 83% and 84%, respectively. Today, under the ban on affirmative
action, the admission rate for whites is 65%, compared with 73% for
Asian Americans. These gaps may become relevant to the attitudes of white voters
confronted with a new choice on affirmative action. Experimental studies
of white voter opinion show that support for merit-based university
admissions drops significantly when respondents are provided information
about the high success rate of Asian Americans. If the primary consideration in voters’ minds is the potential loss
or gain for their own racial group, we may indeed see a reversal in
voting patterns of whites and Asian Americans on affirmative action.
This is particularly true if group fears are based on the kinds of
erroneous or exaggerated claims we are already seeing.

For example, some ethnic media stories claim that affirmative action
would cap Asian American admissions to their share of the resident
population. Not only has this kind of quota been ruled unconstitutional
since 1978; such fears also ignore the fact that the Asian American
share of UC students was about three times their state population share
in 1995, when affirmative action was last in place.

regards

Religion gets in the way of human rights

March 7, 2014 Brown Pundits Archive No Comments filed under Archived Authors

This is my sincere belief, religion should be used as a shield (to comfort the afflicted) and not as a sword (harm the powerless). Since this is not the way things are, it is desirable that religion (and religious doctrines) be banned from the public place.

I understand the difficulty of doing away with age-old traditions, but still the question needs to be asked: why does the Bheel community not cremate the (dead) bodies? Is it not a win-win situation, no unnecessary offense given to the majority, while satisfying criteria set by your own religion (presumably one cant escape by being an atheist). Finally cremation with assistance of electric furnaces are probably a better deal for the environment. Of course in extremis (and that will come for sure in a few decades time) the only possible options will be to convert or to migrate.

But that day, as Bhoro Bheel’s relatives were digging his grave, his
elder brother Moti Bheel says, “Some people warned us against burying
Bhoro in Haji Faqeer graveyard.” He says he was told that the cemetery
was reserved for Muslims and that the Shariah did not allow the burial
of non-Muslims in a Muslim graveyard.

As news of the problem over
the burial spread, many locally influential people, including the
Muslim landowner who employs Bhoro Bheel’s family as farm workers, got
involved. Together, they ensured that the burial took place.

But,
as the Bheels were leaving the graveyard, says Moti Bheel, a few people
turned up and told him and his relatives to exhume Bhoro Bheel’s body
and bury it somewhere else. “They threatened us. They said they would
exhume the body themselves if we did not do so on our own,” Moti Bheel
tells the Herald. The next morning, the Bheels informed the local police
of the threats. This, however, did not deter the other side. “In the
evening, a member of the Bheel community informed us that some people
were digging Bhoro’s grave,” says Moti Bheel. “When we reached there, a
charged crowed of 300 to 400 people had gathered and Bhoro’s body was
lying outside the grave,” he adds.

The crowd had come together
through the efforts of one Qari Abdul Basit, the administrator of a
madrasa in Pangrio. Working through local mosques, he had distributed a
fatwa against the burial of non-Muslims in Muslim graveyards. He also
had prayer leaders announce that those who had exhumed Bhoro Bheel’s
body had discharged their religious duty and had not committed any
crime.

Perhaps deterred by such massive mobilisation, Shaukat
Khatyan, the senior superintendent of the local police, did not take any
action against those who had dug up the body even though he reached the
graveyard immediately after the exhumation. Instead, says Moti Bheel,
he told the Bheels to bury Bhoro Bheel elsewhere.

For the next
eight hours, Bhoro Bheel’s body lay in the open because the landless
Bheels did not have any place to bury it. Their employer came to their
rescue again and donated a six-acre plot of land to them for a
graveyard. Some of the Bheels, however, say they do not know how long
their landlord will allow them to bury their dead in the donated plot.

Two
months later, a similar incident took place in another part of Badin –
in Goth Yar Mohammad Lund in Tando Bhago subdivision – where a recently
buried body of a Hindu was exhumed because it was buried in a graveyard
said to be reserved for Muslims. The only difference, this time around,
was that the exhumation was undertaken by the dead man’s own family
under severe pressure from the local Muslim community.

Allah Dino
Bheel, an old Hindu man, had died in Goth Yar Mohammad Lund on December
23, 2013, and was buried in Bachal Shah graveyard, near Tando Bhago
town. The next day, Allah Dino Khaskhaili, a Muslim prayer leader at a
local mosque, approached Allah Dino Bheel’s sons – Laung, Ramchand and
Dano – and told them to exhume their father’s body and bury him
elsewhere. The prayer leader told them that the Islamic Shariah did not
allow the burial of non-Muslims in a graveyard for Muslims. Khaskhaili
said his followers would exhume Allah Dino Bheel’s body if the Bheel
brothers refused to. With Bhoro Bheel’s example still fresh in their
minds, Laung Bheel and his brothers decided to retrieve their father’s
body and bury him elsewhere.

When Aftab Aghim, the deputy
superintendent of local police, received information about the
exhumation, he rushed to the spot and ordered the Bheels to stop. This
angered Khaskhaili so much that he called for a shutdown of Tando Bhago,
leading to the immediate closure of all local businesses, while some of
his supporters blocked all entry and exit points of the town. Aghim,
then, held prolonged discussions with the elders of both communities and
proposed to build a wall within the graveyard to separate the graves of
the Hindus from those of the Muslims. Luckily, say eyewitnesses, the
two sides agreed to his proposal and the situation was defused.

regards

Caste system explained?

March 3, 2014 Brown Pundits Archive 3 Comments filed under Archived Authors

We inherit our “social competences.” Social mobility is low in the USA (and everywhere else).The shadow of past poverty/prosperity lingers for 10-15 generations. Your surname says a lot about your prospects (which is a truly surprising conclusion). Gregory Clark does not say it explicitly but his surname test is implicitly a caste test, whereby people are classified by the work they do and the status they carry in society (nobles, artisans, shopkeepers).

….new research from Raj Chetty and Emmanuel Saez indicating that social mobility in the United States is not falling,
offering the not-so-reassuring news that the reason it isn’t falling is
that it’s been low for a long time.
…..

………a different research program, associated with UC–Davis economic historian Gregory Clark, which argues that economic mobility is low almost everywhere. He reaches this conclusion with a different research method that lets
him explore much longer-term trends than most of the research you see
on this. …….if you have a noble surname in Sweden today, we know that
your father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father’s father (or
whatever) was a member of the Swedish elite more than 300 years ago. By
contrast, if you have the last name “Andersson” then that means that
your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather
wasn’t a nobleman and probably didn’t practice a skilled trade either.
That’s why he wound up with the generic surname. So we can look at the
present-day incomes of people with noble surnames and compare them to
the present-day incomes of people named “Andersson” and get a picture of
the long-term persistence of the noble/Andersson class gap.

And it’s all the more striking precisely because this identification
strategy is rather crude. A person with a noble surname could still be
of mostly lower- or middle-class ancestry and vice versa, so the
surname thing should underestimate the long-term persistence of the
class gap in Sweden.
…..

According to a new book, The Son Also Rises, by academic Gregory Clark, our chances of getting on in life are largely down to what our family did 300 years ago. Contrary to brighter estimates, which suggest that
past prosperity or poverty can be erased in three to four generations,
Clark reckons it takes 10 to 15.

“Social mobility rates are similar across societies that vary
dramatically in their institutions and income levels. Cradle-to-grave
socialist Sweden and dog-eat-dog, free-to-lose America have similar
rates. Communist China and capitalist Taiwan have similar rates.

regards

Copts- elites amongst elites

February 28, 2014 Brown Pundits Archive 2 Comments filed under Archived Authors

as per Gregory Clark (The Son Also Rises). Indian Christians merit a separate category (why? they are all Brahmins). Separate Iranian Muslim category (there must be a large count of Iranian non-muslim physicians). Chinese are surprisingly low down in the ranks. Black African is possibly the most meaningless classification (the author would probably like to single out black non-Americans, but then there is also black Haitian).

As far as Indians are concerned it would be of interest to look at data across generations- first generation, second generation,…and so on.

regards

Good news

February 19, 2014 Brown Pundits Archive 2 Comments filed under Archived Authors

…one more step towards secular law for all, in an atmosphere where the anti-secular forces are on the rise everywhere.

…a separate question however for the truly informed. Why are Indian muslims forbidden to adopt ( I presume there is no such injunction in “pure” muslim countries)?

In a landmark judgment, the Supreme Court has given Muslims the right to adopt a child despite their personal law prohibiting it.

The apex court said on Wednesday that the laws of land has to get primacy over personal law till the country achieves Uniform Civil Code as provided in Article 44 of the Constitution.

The SC judgment comes on an 8 years old petition by Shabnam Hashmi who
had approached the apex court after being refused permission to adopt.

Though the SC said all individuals have a statutory right to adopt a
child, it said the time is not ripe to declare the right to adopt a
fundamental right.

regards