Sri Lanka is facing severe flooding. Sbarkkum reports major damage to rail and road networks, with Dutch support expected for reconstruction.

Sana Aiyar’s “World at MIT” video touches on her life and work

Sam Dalrymple has a clip on Lahore and Delhi—another reminder of how closely the two cities mirror each other despite partition.

Pakistan’s minority rights bill is worth watching.

If Pakistan wishes to criticise India, or any state, it must first show what genuine protection of minorities looks like. This bill is a test. Let’s see if it holds.

On the cultural side, Ella Wadia (QeA’s great-granddaughter) made her debut at LaBal—a striking continuation of a very old Bombay lineage.

AOC remarks that Trump’s economy is being held up by an “AI bubble,” a claim now making the rounds in US media.

Kabir shares a comedy sketch about Indian mothers picking up Pakistani Urdu from dramas; a small cultural bleed that still amuses both sides.

And finally, Razib has a major piece out on the Aryans; one of his clearest treatments of the subject to date.

The Christians were mid-hymn when the mob kicked in the door.

A swarm of men dressed in saffron poured inside. They jumped onstage and shouted Hindu supremacist slogans. They punched pastors in the head. They threw women to the ground, sending terrified children scuttling under their chairs.

“They kept beating us, pulling out hair,” said Manish David, one of the pastors who was assaulted. “They yelled: ‘What are you doing here? What songs are you singing? What are you trying to do?’”

The attack unfolded on the morning of Jan. 26 at the Satprakashan Sanchar Kendra Christian center in the city of Indore. The police soon arrived, but the officers did not touch the aggressors. Instead, they arrested and jailed the pastors and other church elders, who were still dizzy from getting punched in the head. The Christians were charged with breaking a newly enforced law that targets religious conversions, one that mirrors at least a dozen other measures across the country that have prompted a surge in mob violence against Indian Christians.

Pastor David was not converting anyone, he said. But the organized assault against his church was propelled by a growing anti-Christian hysteria that is spreading across this vast nation, home to one of Asia’s oldest and largest Christian communities, with more than 30 million adherents.

The article makes it clear that this is mostly a feature of the “Cow Belt” and due to the conversion of Dalits and the like. This is The New York Times so I view this skeptically, but if this is happening it seems likely a large proportion of Dalits will convert to Christianity since the Hindu reaction here is depicted as literally reactive.

One thing that does cross my mind is that the Hindus in the piece are depicted as aggressive. But the Christians have an ambition of converting most of the population, and once and if they became the majority they would surely not be the gentle flock they are now. It’s sad, but true.

This story makes a lot of sense in that context, Poor and Desperate, Pakistani Hindus Accept Islam to Get By:

The mass ceremony was the latest in what is a growing number of such conversions to Pakistan’s majority Muslim faith in recent years — although precise data is scarce. Some of these conversions are voluntary, some not.

News outlets in India, Pakistan’s majority-Hindu neighbor and archrival, were quick to denounce the conversions as forced. But what is happening is more subtle. Desperation, religious and political leaders on both sides of the debate say, has often been the driving force behind their change of religion.

Treated as second-class citizens, the Hindus of Pakistan are often systemically discriminated against in every walk of life — housing, jobs, access to government welfare. While minorities have long been drawn to convert in order to join the majority and escape discrimination and sectarian violence, Hindu community leaders say that the recent uptick in conversions has also been motivated by newfound economic pressures.

As someone who has read a great deal about religious dynamics, this is not subtle, but a very typical. Contrary to some claims, very few conversions to Islam were “forced” in a physical sense. Rather, historically, individuals converted out of self-interest or desperation. Often there were whole communities who make this choice.

A second issue is that there are attempts to present a symmetry between what is happening in India and Pakistan. This story illustrates how no such symmetry exists. Muslims in India are obviously at a disadvantage, but their situation is not analogous to Pakistani religious minorities.

Part of the story here is obviously about the treatment of religious minorities under Islam, which was not out of the ordinary in 1000 A.D., but 1,000 years later is anomalous, insofar as low-grade persecution is common. But it is also a story about the lack of Hindu solidarity with these people who were literally “left behind” as the Lohannas decamped for Mumbai.

Most readers of this weblog will already know this story. Far more than I do at least: Construction work at Hindu temple site in Islamabad halted. This part jumped out at me:

The Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q), an ally of Prime Minister Khan’s ruling Tehreek-e-Insaf recently opposed the construction of the temple by claiming that it was “against the spirit of Islam.”

Let’s be frank: isn’t this correct?

Religions are what people make of them, and there are some latitudinarian Muslims who would object to the assertion that the building of a Hindu temple was “against the spirit of Islam.” But historically this action, the obstruction of the building (and repairing) of religious buildings of minority communities has been normative in many Muslim majority societies. Egyptians Copts, for example, have long had to obtain very high level dispensations to repair their churches.

The basic theory from what I recall from Islamic jurists is that minority communities under the protection of Islamic rulers were tolerated, but they need not be encouraged. Their religious liberties were provided at sufferance, and that was enough.

The issue with Hinduism is even deeper: Hinduism is rather explicit in that it is a form of shirk. Whether you conceive of your Hinduism as fundamentally monotheistic or polytheistic, from a Muslim perceived it is polytheistic, and therefore an abomination. The Pakistani polity is illiberal in its behavior, but it is operating squarely within the orthodox parameters of Islamic accommodation to some level of religious pluralism, which combines subordination with delimiting the purview of minority religious beliefs and practices.

This is not limited to Islam, as some readers will be aware that Late Antique pagan practice slowly reconfigured its outline into a shape less offensive to Christianity as the price of toleration (e.g., public animal sacrifice disappeared). In Indonesia Buddhism and Hinduism are both explicitly monotheistic religions, so as not to offend Islamic sensibilities (though in Indonesia Muslims can also convert to Christianity or Hinduism legally, unlike many Muslim nations).

What’s the solution to this illiberality? In the long term, the only answer is greater secularization. As long as orthodox Islam, looking back to the past remains central to Pakistani identity I can’t see any other reaction to the attempt by Hindus to practice and express their religion in the public domain, as opposed to private practice.

Note: There is a long tradition in Abrahamic religions which believes that the gods of polytheistic faiths are actually devils and demons. This is one reason that Christians in Korea have attacked Buddhist statues, and Muslims in Pakistan are expressing horror at the building of a temple to Krishna, who they believe to be a demon who actually exists.

Would like to propose expanding CAA to include the following groups of muslims to:

• get everyone’s feedback on what can practically pass the Indian Lokh Sabha quickly
• see if several major Indian leaders will publicly endorse this

The following text will be continually edited based on feedback.

Proposing to expand CAA to include the following “AND ONLY THE FOLLOWING” groups of muslims IF AND ONLY IF they can prove persecution inside Bangladesh, Pakistan or Afghanistan:

•  13 classes AND ONLY 13 CLASSES of Muraqabah Sufi muslims:
  • 3 classes of Muraqabah Irfan Sufi Shia muslims
    • Sixer Ishmaeli Muraqabah Irfan Sufi Shia muslims
      • Dawoodi Bohra Sixer Ishmaeli Muraqabah Irfan Sufi Shia muslims
    • Twelver Jafari Muraqabah Irfan Sufi Shia muslims
  • 10 other classes of Muraqabah Sufi muslims
    • Chisti Muraqabah Sufi muslims
    • Qadiri Muraqabah Sufi muslims
    • Pir Nund Rishi Muraqabah Sufi muslims
    • Pir Shirdi Sai Nath Muraqabah Sufi muslims
    • Pir Kabir Muraqabah Sufi muslims
    • Pir Janardhan Swami Muraqabah Sufi muslims
    • Pir Hazrat Babajan Muraqabah Sufi muslims
    • Pir Syed Mohammed Baba Tajuddin Muraqabah Sufi muslims
    • Pir Baba Fariduddin Ganjshakar Muraqabah Sufi muslims
    • Pir Baba Budan Muraqabah Sufi muslims
• Agnostic, Atheist and Ex muslims
• LBGTQ plus muslims
• Female femnist muslims

 

Any and all Muraqabah Sufi muslims admitted under CAA need to be certified and verified as Muraqabah Sufi muslims by a council of Muraqabah Sufi muslims chaired by Pir Diwan Sahib Syed Zainul Abedin. Pir Diwan Sahib Syed Zainul Abedin will appoint a committee of Muraqabah Sufi muslims at his own discretion to assist him in this task.

 

Any and all Agnostic, Atheist and Ex muslims, LBGTQ plus muslims and female femnist muslims admitted under CAA need to be certified and verified by a council of muslims chaired by Tarek Fatah . Tarek Fatah will appoint a committee of muslims at his own discretion to assist him in this task.

 

In addition to approval by above councils of muslims, any and all muslim CAA applicants are subject to extensive deep background security checks and can be vetoed by the Indian government for any reason.

NO OTHER MUSLIMS will be permitted to apply for CAA. No other aspect of CAA will be affected.

Please provide your suggestions about how to improve the above draft.

Neha Pervaiz, 15, a resident of Ittehad Town, told ucanews.com about her ordeal. “I was taken by my aunt, a Muslim convert, to her house on April 28 to help her look after her sick son.

But there I was asked to marry a Muslim man named Imran. When I refused, they beat me up and threatened to kill my minor brother who was with me,” Neha said.

“Later I was taken to a room where I was raped by Imran.

They then pressurized me to convert to Islam and marry Imran.“On April 29, I was taken to an Islamic cleric, who asked me to recite Quranic verses and gave me a new name, Fatima.”

Unfortunately, no authentic data is available on forced conversions and forced marriages in Pakistan, but about 1,000 cases involving Hindu and Christian girls were estimated to have taken place in Sindh province alone in 2018, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP).

I'm in Lahore and was not fasting. At lunch I ran through complete MM Alam road to grab something to eat, none of the restaurants including KFC McDonald's was serving. So what are minorities, sick people, women on menstruation & any other person who is not fasting supposed to do?

— Ahsan (@ahsanzawar) May 15, 2019

Note to Kabir if you write something daft, “like Allah said so”, I’ll ban you. Don’t invite further Shirk by baiting me when I’m understandably upset about what a shit country I hail from.

https://twitter.com/RamblingSufi/status/1128794048418983936?s=20

Yes I get mildly triggered by this. If Fasting is so spiritual and sacred then people who fast should not mind food.

Pakistan is simply an oppressive society and the liberals who hold out on it and somehow pretend that “it’s all to do with Zia” are deluded about the nature of Islam. Jinnah & Iqbal had no real clue about the devil that they were unleashing.

In fact Arab, Turkish & Persian (or even Punjabi) Islam is not really problematic but there is something extremely insiduous about the Islam that Pakistan has nurtured. It’s the substitute for a lack of cultural and national identity hence this over-reliance on religion. Without Islam the Persians still have Iran, the Arabs Arabic and the Turks Turkey; what do the Pakistanis have but India, their most hated enemy?

That’s just BS; there is strong doctrinal justification for coercion in Islam. Islam is built on a societal domination where Islamic values are imposed and yes while Islamic societies were diverse; it was Muslim & Dhimmi (the Kafirs were retrofitted to become Dhimmi).

There is alot of fear in Pakistan however I disagree with Razib that Pakistani liberals are simply aping belief. Pakistani Liberals have bought into all aspects of TNTism & Islamic nationhood hook, link and sinker (even I myself lose my shit over the Urdu language, such conditioning will never go away).

BritPaks like Jameela Jamil and myself routinely shit on the worthless aspects of Pakistani culture. I’m really inspired by Jameela’s tweet:

https://twitter.com/jameelajamil/status/1128013071295762432?s=20

I haven’t had an abortion but again I’m not going to focus on micro-aggressions in Georgia but macro aggressions in Pakistan:

When at 19 Mehnaz became pregnant for the fifth time, she panicked. She already had four daughters, and her husband was threatening to throw her out if she had another. So she did what millions of Pakistani women do every year: She had an abortion.

Like many of those women, her abortion was partly self-administered. “I kept taking tablets — whatever I laid my hands on,” she says. “I lifted heavy things” — like the furniture in her tiny living room. She drank brews of boiled dates — many Pakistanis believe the beverage triggers labor.

The Indian government imposes a no-contact policy for the Sentinelese for the sake of their cultural and biological integrity (they would probably die of disease). I’m not proposing this for the Kalash, but at least bringing them to Ladakh would prevent the imminent threat of assimilation, though the individual appeal of Delhi would still be there.

There’s a lot of anger from Hindu nationalists online. Often toward Muslims. I get the reasons. But this is something that is constructive and positive. The Kalash are not a fossil race. But they preserve something that is unique and soon to be lost to the world.

You can also support the podcast as a patron (the primary benefit now is that you get the podcasts considerably earlier than everyone else…). Would appreciate more positive reviews.

Today we talk to Shadi Hamid, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. The author of Islamic Exceptionalism and Temptations of Power.

The range of topics was diverse, from the new live-action Aladin film, the role of religious minorities in Egypt, and what it’s like to seem politically heterodox online. I say seem because Shadi’s sympathies with a sort of Left economic populism that isn’t quite exotic, but he evinces less fixation on epistemological hygiene than is common for modern public intellectuals.

We also talked extensively on his views about the role of religion in life, and religious identity in his own life, and the incentive structures of the careers of D.C. intellectual types.

In a campaign led by a few other residents, the Hindu family was refused their basic right of acquiring the property. It was claimed that instructions to prevent Hindus from acquiring apartments had come from an army office located near the building, based on the so-called belief that all Hindus are Indian spies. That claim was later found out to be false.

Personal conversations revealed that the bigoted residents were actually really concerned about the family setting up idols in their home as part of their religious rites. There were some other, more rational residents, who suggested that what the Hindu family did in their home was their private business, but the voices of sanity were silenced.

The article is written by a Pakistani Christian and is couched in the language of engrained fear. No Pakistani minority will dare lash out in the same manner that Indian Muslims do.

I eagerly await Kabir Bhai and his fellow Pakistani liberals to lecture us:

(1.) Pakistan is a Muslim state so that there is absolutely nothing we can do about this.

(2.) India does the same thing with vegetarian colonies.

The Roots of Hindu Rage are very simple. They are seeing their Hindu kin being turned into second-class citizens all over the Muslim world, while the Indian Muslim minority flaunt (and exploit) their privileges in India. Compared to the Muslim minority in Myanmar, China or even Israel; Indian Muslims have it exceptionally easy.

AR Rahman and Adnan Sami were holding court like demi-gods in the Voice yesterday; I cannot think of a single society where Muslims & Islamicate culture hold so much prestige.

If the same thing had happened to India to a Muslim family; the Nehruvians, post-modernists and NGOs would make sure it’s front page news.

Nehru India as the “Deep State”

The Deep State of India is Nehruvian India, which is driven to ensure that the post-Independence constitutional settlement endures. The inane constitutional settlement ensures that India will always be a fractured nation and therefore will need a “Dynasty” to wield power.

Would HinduRashtra split India?

Hindu India would not lead to a fractured India because most of the Hindu states and population are anyway strongly Hindu. The only non-Hindu states (Punjab, some of the seven sisters) would be able to safeguard their own local traditions in the same manner Tamils have done with regards to Hindi; they are not pan-Indian ethnicities. There is only one minority that will screech and battle every step to Hindu Rashtra and that is the Muslim minority. They will never sing Vande Mataram or appease the Hindu majority. Babri Masjid need not have been destroyed; Hindus are not a vengeful people and Ram idols in the building would have turned it into another Balaji site.

What is happening is that Hindu Rage at Muslim behaviour is instead being deflected towards Islamicate culture (and the odd riot) and therefore Allahabad pays the prices for Allah refusing to share the limelight with Hindu deities.

Rahul Gandhi in context with the rest of the global Left

There is nothing miraculous about Rahul Gandhi’s resurgence; it is the same syndrome you see in progressive parties all over the world.

Rahul Gandhi is Jeremy Corbyn, Beto O’Rourke, Justin Trudeau and even Macron. The diverse left needs a straight white male figurehead/kingmaker to hold its coalition together whereas the right can experiment with different leaders (May, Merkel, Modi, Marine Le Pen).

Nehru India as the Brahmin bulwark against a Shudra HinduRashtra

The upper caste urban vote bank of the BJP feel their guilt expiated when they are able to vote for a OBC like Modi; it may be a reason why Advani (a Sindhi Brahmin) never made it as PM. Maybe the Brahmins of the BJP aren’t able to maybe fight tooth and claw or as hard their Shudra counterparts?

It also raises an interesting question that if Hindu India’s best dynasties were actually Shudra (Gupta, Mauryas), then is the Mughal-British-Nehruvian Deep State of India committed to Brahmin rule by the Nehru-Gandhi clan as opposed to Shudra Rule by the BJP?

The Vijaynagar Empire and the saving of the Hindu Majority

It is interesting how Indian history is taught in a very misleading way. Akbar and the Mughals are presented as Indian (which is questionable since their eye-watering opulence, the Peacock Throne apparently cost twice as much as the Taj) but the Vijaynagar Empire is seen as a footnote (there is an important twitter thread on it, which I can’t find).

The Vijaynagar Empire probably did save Hinduism from Islam by keeping South India structurally and absolutely Hindu. It is interesting that Northwest and north east India are majority Muslim (when one includes Pak & Bangladesh into it) but that South India, the other great wing of India, is 90%+ Hindu. There is no reason why South India & the Deccan, relatively far from the Brahmanical and Sanskrit core of UP, should not have had a substantially Muslim contiguous belt like the Punjab and Bengal.

There are different reasons as to why the Punjab and Bengal became Muslim but by the time the Muslim dynasties had infiltrated the South, there was an intellectually and ideologically resilient Hindu population.

I would also hazard that though the Deep State is optically secular-Hindu but structurally Mughal & British.

Part-Partition – the worst of all worlds

It explains why Nehru and Gandhi agreed to a “worst of all worlds” with a part-partition when they should have either gone for No-Partition or a Full Partition.

They could have made false promises to Jinnah, keep India united, wait for Jinnah to die and then set about their true scheme- that was the modus operandi of Jinnah and Iqbal to lie compulsively, promise everything and never settle except for what they wanted. Pakistan is only following the blueprint set by Jinnah and Iqbal.

Otherwise in a “Full Partition” Gandhi and Nehru should have insisted on a full and final exchange of populations in the mode of Greece & Turkey. Even though Greece and Turkey have a bloody history; it is not as tortuous as India and Pakistan. This is because India & Pakistan had an incomplete partition by Nehruvian-Gandhian design. Gandhi was assassinated on his way to advocated for the rights of Pakistan.

South India as the only “structurally” Hindu society

It is only South India and Bali that are structurally Hindu societies (is it any wonder that the great architectural monuments in the South are Temples and in the North are Mosques) but these thoughts are either for another post, my journal or my locked blog (sometimes my writings can be eye-watering controversial and I prefer them somewhere safe but private).