Another BP Podcast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, iTunes, Spotify,  and Stitcher. Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe at one of the links above.

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

Now, in Memoriam….

I had been very persistent in wanting to do a podcast to mark 100 years.

In the end I managed to stitch together a rather interesting ensemble.

The talk could be divided into two parts. Initially the four of us (Vidhi, MJ, Subhash and myself) discusses about the shame of Britain not apologising for the massacre.

We managed to find some sort of consensus and agreement among ourselves that as Asians in Britain; it was necessary for Britain to apologise.

As Vidhi left the podcast, Razib joined in shortly thereafter. I had already meandered by then and my own “political awakening” started to stir.

We touched on identity issues, the Hindu Rage (and election) and living in a “white Man’s world.”

As mentioned in the previous post; this is the first time I’ve had “Cambridge Voices” in the podcast and long May it continue.

Vidhi and MJ provide a very strong addition in that she is a Congress-lite supporter and he’s a BJPite so their views are a soft spectrum. Subhash was able to add a gentler British Asian viewpoint (he has extensive India experience as he traversed both North & South for his expat career).

Razib was a bit of shock jock and sort of jolted us from our British centric perspectives. Interestingly though in Britain, the feeling that we are the Greece to America’s Rome is so embedded that the Rest just don’t really factor.

I’m much more confident in my “Britishness” to now challenge it. I vote Tory, support the Monarchy, wish for a return to a Hereditary House of Lord and support the Union. I worry about Brexit but would rather have No-Deal delivered swiftly rather than this lingering wound.

There is an invisible colour line that bars entry to the Aristocracy and Royalty (Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, is a suitable consort for Prince Harry but not William because her descendants are not in the direct line of succession).

It’s one of the invisible angles that I tack on as I merge my offline Tharoorian stands with my online Turanianism (the Turanian triangle have such fiercely proud cultures).

Finally this was a real collision of my offline and online worlds since each of the podcast participants happen to be very closely connected. I wonder if I’m running foul of Kangana Ranaut and her charge of nepotism but I suspect not..

Sharing this here as she’s an ally not a Coloniser:

We just wrapped a couple of podcasts this week (I have to write shownotes) but we started the “Brown CamCast” (sounds like a Sunny Leone video) last night to commemorate the 100 year anniversary of Jallianwala Bagh.

I was always having difficulty finding podcaster since I’m not a prominent Twitter personality but it’s dawned on me that being in Cambridge and “being married to gown” (we were lucky Vidhi had time to join in yesterday’s podcast) allows me access to intellectual capital at my doorstep.

Razib stepped in as soon as Vidhi exited (I think there was a technical issue since I’m rubbish at hosting) but we had a good ongoing discussion.

Vidhi wants to do a podcast on “the evolution of Bollywood” and why it doesn’t get the acclaim/acknowledgements that say Iranian cinema gets.

MJ is doing a write-up on the BJP manifesto for his blog the Bengal Chronicle and we’re probably going to do an election podcast soon.

https://www.facebook.com/32040/posts/10107138523039401?sfns=mo

Punjab Governor declines to attend reception for Queen's Birthday hosted by British Dy High Commissioner in Chandigarh, citing Jallianwala Bagh massacre's 100th anniversary.@IndianExpress pic.twitter.com/VI3M1UfI78

— Man Aman Singh Chhina (@manaman_chhina) April 10, 2019

https://www.facebook.com/551630878316505/posts/1773624729450441?sfns=mo

Continue reading Chutzpah- celebrating HM the Queen’s birthday in the Punjab on the eve of the 100th anniversary of Jallianwala Bagh

One hundred years since the Amritsar massacre, probably among the worst violations in all of Britain's tenure in India and the phrases uttered still don't contain the word 'SORRY'. So much for the paragon of civility and refinement in the world. #shame

— Vidhi Lalchand (@VRLalchand) April 11, 2019

Continue reading Jallianwala Bagh; 100 years on

I’m just shocked to read this, how idiotic of the Baha’is to lose out on the body of one of India’s greatest authors!

Typical Persian arrogance; I’m actually upset since this would have been such a Kudos to the Faith in Asia. Khushwant Singh was an incredible intellectual and one of the literary Lions of the Punjab.

It’s deeply insulting to have insisted on burying him in a row when common decency would have been to reserve him a distinguished honour. As I was telling V this is the silent racism endemic to the Baha’i community. The largest believers in the world are in India but the UHJ (Universal House of Justice) has only one Desi out of 9.

The Persians and the Persianate believers (lots of Desis become Persianised) owe an explanation for this; utter stupidity because of callous racism and fanaticism.

I used to be keen on a burial because with a burial you give back to the earth what you have taken. Now, it will be the electric crematorium. I had requested the management of the Bahai faith if I could be buried. Initially, they had agreed, but then they came up with all sorts of conditions and rules. I had wanted to be buried in one corner with just a peepal tree next to my grave. After okaying this, the management later said that that wouldn’t be possible and that my grave would be in the middle of a row and not in a corner. I wasn’t okay with that—even though I know that once you are dead it makes no difference. But I was keen to be buried in one corner. They also told me later that they would chant some prayers, which again I couldn’t agree with, because I don’t believe in religion or in religious rituals of any kind.

How To Live & Die

I did a mini-gasp on social media when I saw Drew check in “Azad Kashmir.” Surely he would have been aware of the hyper-political language.

I would like to call him a Coloniser but since I’m in Turanian, rather than Tharoorian, phase at the moment; he’s one of the good guys.

PewDiePie on the other is a racist low-class wannabe Coloniser..

Also (related but not really):

India in 2019: 1. Nehru’s great-granddaughter signals that her family still follows obscure Kashmiri Brahmin custom. 2. Apparently manages to get the festival’s name wrong. 3. Person handling Twitter account doesn’t know how to use apostrophes. https://t.co/DRuyW5HR0H

— Sadanand Dhume (@dhume) April 6, 2019

My friend MJ has an interesting piece on Why we need National Continuity.

I was also reading an article about the lack of a “national party in India” (Modi versus 20 states) but I found the comment to the post excerpted below to be very interesting and well-written.

A paen to a very different type of India. As in all things the labels Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan are very muddled because they are ultimately foreign labels. But that is not the point of the post or the comment below but rather that there are many many types of Indias not just Modi’s Bharat.

I was a bit surprised that Telangana is divided up between Rao and Reddy, to India’s credit it has funnelled the caste divides into a democratic framework (casteocracy can work). In some forms of culture South Asia is probably the most conservative region on earth since culture is essentially distributed into each caste and clan. The family networks haven’t nuclearised yet and without atomisation, Westernisation is somewhat harder to achieve.

Mr Gupta’s articulation is absolutely in line with what India is. I only hope he believes in the India that is and articulates more strongly and more often about this India. Not the India that is being projected to us by ‘pretending to be independent’ darbari (but really sarkari channels and papers) channels but who depend on the government for advertisement money. 

We are a country where the language/dialect varies by district in many cases. If we try distinguishing regions based on multiple factors, India is a combination of few hundred states. We have multiple new years. Some of us revolve our lives around the sun and others around the moon. That itself tell us, how diverse we are. We have common festivals but they are celebrated for different reasons – sometimes very different reasons. How can then our politics be led by one fellow, who thinks of himself no less than God or who is positioned by the darbaris as the reincarnation of God. Given that the God has created us to be different, what business does a self-serving politician or the darbaris have to tell us how to live our life? We are largely independent thinking and that is why no effort at assimilation in the past has succeeded. What does it tell us about who we are? Not to mention that our geography is that of a continent and our economic opportunities vary significantly. 

Not everyone can or has to become one kind of citizen – thinking the same way.  Continue reading Many types of India prepare to Vote

I think Ta’arof translates into Takaluf in the Urdu speaking world but I can’t be sure.

I find it rather amusing that while India is being dissed on the world’s most popular youtube channel; a Jewish American travelloger is extolling Pakistan to the skies.

If Vidhi wasn’t Indian then I can take some schadenfraude but considering she is a daughter of the Indus, and her tribe are exiles from Pakistan, they are the best type of Pakistanis; those that are entirely free from the taint of Islam. Continue reading Misunderstanding Ta’arof

• “Guess to beat one Swedish boy you need a billion Asians.”
• “All it took was a massive corporate entity with every song in Bollywood.”
• He then tries to allege corruption of T-Series (second 48-1.10). Usual coloniser tactic when they get jealous of Brown Success (as though they didn’t simply rape and conquer the world).
• He then calls Bangladesh, Indian, which of course is not an insult but is a deliberate ignorance (Bangladesh fought a long and bloody war to be considered it’s own 1971 nation).
• Minute 2:02 he refers to defecation assuming a joke on India’s open defecation rates.
• Then he dares to have the temerity to educate South Asians, who are probably the world’s greatest wordsmiths on the distinction between defamation and defecation. To paraphrase they were savages while we were busy composing the Vedas and the Avestas not to mention the Quran, which probably has no literary equivalent the world over (Muhammad may have been a sick pedo but he seemed a pretty decent poet).
• Did you know that Indians have poo-poo in their brains?
• Then some long orange haired junkie sings, How about next you figure out how to fix the caste system?
• Maybe all those ads will solve your crippling poverty.

Continue reading PewDiePie is Coloniser Trash