Tag: Identity
Pakistani-American teenager is new Ms. Marvel
the state of Sindh
Sindh can be heart-breaking. We found Devo & friends working hard in fields. Said they knew no one who went to school pic.twitter.com/iHKyHXVa6b
You gotta love the Bhutto-Z kids
I have no idea how to embed this video so I’ll just link to it.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=485049061617125
I think Bakhtawar is speaking Sindhi? She does resemble her mother so (both the daughters do) whereas Bilawal seems to have taken more after his father.
I’m really reminded of the antics of hereditary princelings; it’s nice to know Pakistan is the only country left in the world where such antics are possible. Personally I think it’s a strength after all Pakis have become so drab that any splash of colour will do.
Interestingly enough I would hazard the state of the Sindhi language in India is relatively dire (this is based on observations none of my fiancee’s generation will speak Sindhi though most understand it). I did tweet at Bilawal to invite the wealthier Hindu Sindhis to the festivals but nothing availed of it. Any revival of Sindhi culture is going to include the wealthiest population (merchants, traders & property owners) who still disproportionately happen to be Hindu.
Why are Pakistanis such a jealous and vicious lot?
I’m sure everyone on Twitterstan (why are there so many Pakis on twitter btw) is condemning BBZ’s brave Sindh festival. Apparently the hoo-ha is caused by the fact that Mohenjardo has been scaffolded and used as a stage for the festival.
My own thoughts on the festival is that it seems rather ethnic and downmarket as opposed to cosmopolitan and pseudo-Western (let’s keep it real – the upscale Urdu-speaking Mohajers are now the core constituency of Guccistan, we like Urdu but prefer English), which is what elite should be trying to foster.
At any rate now half of Twitterstan is slinging at BBZ and his anglo allies for somehow desecrating Mohenjardo. Myra Macdonald made the good observation where were these Pakistanis when Bamiyan was being blow to bits. Also these are the same Pakis (middle class Urdu speaking Islam lot) that believe our history beings with Mohammed Bin Qasim & ends with Quaid-e-Azam.
Personally I’m glad I stay out of Paki politics (I have to since it’s doctrine for us to remain strictly non-partisan) but Pakistan seems to be uniquely affected by Tall Poppy syndrome (which deeply affects the Old Commonwealth; contrast the US & Canada) and also the developing world problem of vicious, aggressive cut-throat competition for the limited space.
Bilawal is what promises for a Hereditary Princeling of Pakistan these days; he and his sisters are a localised version of a fumbling royal dynasty. Let them indulge their passing fancy because there aren’t many other good representatives of Pakistan (their cousin Fatima is of course stunning but then again she’s only quarter Paki, far too caught up in a blood feud & doesn’t have that feel for Pakistan that a Guccistani should naturally have).
Pakistanis sadly make so little use of Mohenjardo and other such sites that at least a good send-off in some forgettable festival isn’t the best way to mark the true end of 5,000 years of Indus Civilisation. Since these very same critics of Bilawal (the Urdu speaking Punjabi Islam middle classes) are the very same one who’ll happily put on Burka & Dishdasha to make sure that Pakistan finally becomes the Arab-Muslim country that Quaid-e-Azam may or may not have promised us.
A lonely BP
Since most of our contributors haven’t been enabled yet it’s pretty much me manning the fort. Two always riveting pieces from Centre India (lest I deviate from a “Brown” Topic) . The below is from Harsh Gupta who I follow on twitter and it touches on Indian identity, which is an apparently inexhaustible topic (like Israeli identity) since they have to at least nominally some measure of inclusion (purport to be liberal democracies) yet also chauvinism (such is the way of nationalism).
The Indian centre-left tries to co-opt Christians, dalits, tribals and the “very poor” into a coalition that is electorally sustainable. In 2009, large sections of the urban middle class too went with them. But they are now coming back towards the BJP, which has grown from middle and upper castes in North India to a broader coalition.
The Muslim percentage of population of what is now India is about half of what it was in 1924, because of the partition, despite faster population growth amongst Indian Muslims. The 2011 census results as far as I know have not yet been broken down by religion, but the Muslim population should be around 15%, higher than 13.6% in 2001. This would mean the Indian Muslim population is around 180-190 million Muslims. The 250 million number peddled by fanatics – both Hindu and Muslim – is simply inaccurate. Sikhs and especially Christians make significant religious minorities as well. A Letter to Indian Muslim Youth
India and identity – In ten pieces Varshney’s writing (‘Why India must allow hyphens‘, IE, Feb 13) that “If Indians can be Gujarati Indians or Hindu Indians, why can’t there be Muslim Indians or Christian Indians?”, is a strawman. Nobody is saying Indians cannot see themselves and fellow citizens as belonging to any group. The argument is simply for the government to not see Indians as Hindus, Muslims, and Christians or so on… 9. Against entrenched identities – Indian Express
…it is high time the Indian state breaks from Nehru’s construct of seeing religious minorities as “separate from us” and stops indulging in the “soft bigotry of low expectations” from certain communities.