Mindy Kaling – the South East Asian

I follow Black Twitter (well Black Instagram) very closely and I’m taking a keen interest in the Wrinkle in Time controversy. However I couldn’t resist:

“Shouldn’t everyone have a seat at the table? That’s all we are saying here,” DuVernay said at a press conference. “Mindy is South-East Asian, Deric McCabe, a little Filipino-American boy. African-American, biracial, black, Caucasian, let everyone be there, Latino. It’s about time.”

Not to quibble but Mindy is half Tamil & half Bengali (her actual name is Vera Mindy Chokalingam). I really admire how she’s Westernised her name without losing her roots (contracting Chokalingam was quite clever).

I have been to Calcutta and I regularly go to Chennai (my wife was born in Madras). There is definitely a tropical feel to Chennai and Calcutta is a very romantic city with a beautiful but unkempt colonial heritage. They are of course firmly in South Asia but I’m not expecting the talented Ava to know the particularities of Asian geography (in the West we are all Wakandans).

I tweeted earlier today that in Hollywood one is either White or Wakandan. The People of Colour debate has been effectively championed by African Americans who define the diversity debate. It is Ava’s magnanimity that when casting her film she also includes Asians of all sorts. I hope Wrinkle in Time smashes expectations. I hazily remember reading the book many moons ago in the summer of ’92/93 as an eight year old. It was a random gift from my friend’s mother and I remember being struck by it’s dark tones. Of course many decades later I read Wrinkle in the Skin, which was an even darker tome on post-apocalyptic earthquakes (which is a surprisingly gripping genre).

Persian Princess of Pakistan; Benazir Bhutto

Since Benazir and I are both half-Persians I always found her life to be interesting (I could never get enough of her quip that she knew enough Persian to understand the family gossip). I was randomly googling her when I came across this startling excerpt. I don’t know much about this incident?

You surely know that one of the most psychologically formative experiences for the young Benazir was growing up in a house where her father (Zulfikar) gave his Persian mistress pride of place in the home. Benazir would come to breakfast with her father and mistress at the table while her mother ate from a tray quietly and alone in her bedroom in another wing of the house. When one tries to understand how Benazir came to have her husband kill her brother, it helps to know what a strange childhood she had. Salman Rushdie’s thinly-veiled roman a clef about the Bhuttos and Zia, Shame, captures some of this atmosphere quite well.

Apparently Nusrat left back to Iran for 6months but wasn’t allowed to take the children with her (Islamic law on divorce & custody being as enlightening as it was) but to be fair I’ve always found Zulfikar to be a somewhat disdainful and problematic character. I had heard in his last years that he had a Bengali mistress (nicknamed Black Beauty) who now lived with her female lover in Karachi but I have no idea what to believe.
It’s remarkable the extent to which Benazir looked like her mother. In the picture below I could have sworn this was was Benazir, not Nusrat, who was with the Shah and his elegant wife Farah Diba.
Born on March 23, 1929, Nusrat had lived a life of comfort after marrying Mr Bhutto as his second wife in 1951. In this file photo, Begum Bhutto is seen along with their imperial majesties, the Shahanshah Arymehr and Shahbano of Iran, Prime Minister Zulifikar Ali Bhutto and President Fazal Illahi Chaudhry. ? Dawn File Photo

A few remarkable facts about Benazir were: Continue reading Persian Princess of Pakistan; Benazir Bhutto

Why language families matter (in an Iranian context)

I’m typing out this post while in the nearby table 4 young students are recreating the Cambridge Bangladesh society (apparently it’s been moribund for a few years while the Indian & Pak Socs are simply flourishing). I find the irony to be delicious; I can’t escape Brownitude in even the Waspiest of places. I’m overhearing their conversation and it sort of weakly ties into my post about how intellectuals in the West can have such a lingering and profound influence on politics in the East.. Continue reading Why language families matter (in an Iranian context)

Taimur or Faiz Ali Khan

During her break from lab work, my wife was just updating me on the latest hoo-ha out of Bollywood; that Saif wanted to rename his son to Faiz from Taimur but Kareena prevailed.

To be fair before the naming controversy last year I didn’t really connect Taimur with Tamerlane but I can understand the objections.

However I do think that India gives far too much of a pass to its Bollywood fraternity. Taimur Ali Khan is by rights 3/4 Hindu by descent but the way he’s been named (like his older half-siblings) it’s straight up Muslim.

To be honest I don’t think Saif was trying to invoke the ghost of Taimur but even so I do think a classy Hindu/neutral name would have worked.

If I had a child I would think of ways balancing out the heritage in the name so it would reflect all of its identity, rather than a part of it.

Alot of the Indian Bahá’í pioneers have very heavy Iranian/Muslim names but they started giving Hindu names to their next generations in order to better integrate. I was reading about this Buddhist/Muslim marriage in Ladakh (the NYTimes had profiled them with a strong sympathy for the Muslim perspective) and no surprise the Buddhist wife converted in the end.

This insistence on unilateral transmission of faith and identity makes Islam very difficult to digest in some societies. Maybe intermarriages should follow the Irish model where sons take on the confessional status of their fathers and daughters of their mother (until the Catholic Church put a stop to that) but again Islam has a problem with that.

Islam has a lot of problems; Muslims really need to start fixing them..

As an aside here is a little excerpt about young Taimur’s name sake (from the book, the Mongol Conquests):

Is there a Muslim concept of nationhood?

I should have titled this post as “Islamic concept” since there is a difference between Islam & Muslim.

When I review Two Nation Theory (I am not assessing the merits & demerits of it) it sounds remarkably like the Bahá’í conception of the world.

In the sense that Bahá’ís have a very weak notion of nation or race or even language but prioritise the Faith over all else. Now while there are substantial differences with the parent religion (we must always be loyal to the governments we reside, we can be patriotic, we can take up arms etc, integrate wherever possible) this is ultimately an Islamic concept that wormed its way into the Faith.

Both Christianity & Islam are universalistic religions and Christianity only became reconciled to the Nation-State (after the Treaty of Westphalia – now I could be wrong but that’s not the point of the post – we are talking about Islam here).

The Dharmic religions are about an individual’s relationship to their own path (again I could be wrong) and it is arguable that their institutionalisation May have been speeded up interactions with the aggressive Abrahamic faiths (who as an example have divvied up Africa between them).

The question is what is the equivalent of the Treaty of Westphalia for the Islamic world. Until the abolishment of the Ottoman Empire; there was nominal allegiance (if you can call it that) to the Caliph and some Sunnis have a weakfish relationship with the House of Saud.

Two Nation Theory is a reflection that the universalising tendencies of Islam co-exists with the Western formulation of the Nation state (most complex societies developed into Empires & Kingdoms with few exceptions, which is why projecting nationalism into the deep past is unsatisfactory at best).

The “strange political behaviour” of UP Muslims, who primarily and paradoxically drove the cause of Partition, to then abrogate all power to the indigenous people Cis-Indus (since the 50’s Pakistan has primarily been under Punjabi & Sindhi rule with the exception of Musharraf) is a worthwhile discussion.

A few questions and statements;

(1) for the Muslim-majority provinces Partition was an absurd concept. Until a few years before 1947 political sympathy for Pakistan in the Punjab, Sindh, NWFP & Bengal was tepid at best.

(2) how were these Muslims cuckolded; was it primarily the promise of dislodging their non-Muslim economic elites but then again no one could have foreseen the vast ethnic cleansing to come; the Quaid thought it would be a legal, technical matter (of course Direct Action Day also mena that QeA was no strange to the power of a good communal riot)?

(3) as an aside Quaid-e-Azam was a brilliant tactician but a pathetic strategist. He achieved his immediate goals at the sacrifice of larger ones. He could have withdrawn Muslim support for Independence (which was not strong particularly after the crushing Delhi genocide of our Mughal antecedents post-Mutiny by the Brits) in exchange for a Lebanon arrangement and security guarantees (PM Hindu, President Muslim etc etc / Muslim regiments so on so forth).

(4) why has Pakistan endured? It is arguable just how successful 1971 would have been without Indian support. Indira masterfully tapped into the East Pakistani zeitgeist and galvanised a old Bengali-speaking nation into a new Bangladeshi beginning. Kudos to Indira & Sheikh Mujibur; but Bangladesh (like Pakistan before it) was not a foregone conclusion. The language question was not as important as the political and economic one. Why didn’t Zulfikar cede to Sheikh Mujibur?

(5) what is the Treaty of Westphalia moment for Islam? For South Asian Muslim nationalism it was certainly 1971 as well as Urdu nationalism (why did we import millions of fair skinned Alien Afghans but not couple of hundred thousand darker skinned Biharis – Musharraf stabbed the Urdu-speaking cause in the back when he lectured Bangladesh to integrate them in rather than repatriate to their homes in Karachi). The vast majority of “foreign ancestry” in South Asian Muslim (both Urdu-speaking and Indus Muslims) is in fact Pathan (also Afghan/Pashtun) not Arab, Persian or Turkish. Rohillakand is a good example; the Bollywood fraternity is stocked with Khans, who are only a few generations removed from Peshawar.

(6) the idealisation in Pakistan are ethnic Punjabis who speak (& ape/aspire according to one’s political vernacular) Anglo/Urdu Mughalai-infused culture (is it little wonder that Kabir & I cant be objective when it comes to the Mughals?) but who also magically look very Pathan (the exact same thing is happening to Persians & Azeris; Persians from the south, east and centre of Iran are traditionally a swarthy olive skinned people who are dramatically lightening up as Azeri assimilate into the Persian ethnicity).

(7) is Two-Nation theory a threat to India vis a vis Urdu speaking Muslims and Kashmir?

(a) The Urdu speakers are resigned to their political marginalisation and seek to make their way in cricket & Bollywood (a bit like African Americans – a very visible rhetorically active population that is also economically weak/ does that make the Jains, Marwaris as Jews; I would suggest the Parsis are like a miniature reflection as they are conscious of their foreign origins). In fact it is the ethnic Muslims (who speak local languages) that seem more susceptible to fanaticism.

(b) Kashmiris fight predominantly for Kashmiri nationalism, Pakistani Pan-Indus (pan-Urdu / pan-Islamic; it’s so nebulous) is a distinct second (more like pan-Indianism is a distant third).

(8) In a case of supra-nationalism; SAARC, CENTO or OIC. Aam admi would go for OIC; Muhajir intellectuals (who are still a very important class, this was BBs social circle) are fond of the Persianate goals of CENTO (which is dead for all intent & purposes; I resurrected it for this post) while SAARC is the pragmatic choice.

(9) however 70years of Pakistani nationalism has very successfully planted the seed of Islamic glories. The hearts of Pakistanis skip a beat when they see Alhambra but they simply mouth off unconvincingly about Taxila or Gandhara. The irony of Partition is that Mohenjadaro & Taj Mahal are really in the wrong countries.

(10) When I made the heated quip about the alien Brahminical scripts it touches up a very really reality that the Highest culture in Pakistan looks West & further West rather than East. We may dance to Bollywood tunes and Pakistan actors look to Bombay but there has been a very real cultural and emotional rupture in the Aftermath of Partition. The mind follows where the heart is..

(11) my final point is that among Pakistanis; Kabir & I form the most “Indian” contingents. We both ascribe to some sort of Indianism, which the vast majority of our cohort do not. The fact that Kabir looks toward Hindu musical traditions and my wife is of course a Hindu-born atheist.. it’s interesting to see we can’t find common ground with the Indian contributors in this blog; maybe because we perceives what it means to be Indian very very differently.

(b) I am willing to give up on Pakistan but without the giant totems symbols of Urdu & the Mughals I cannot relate to India except as my wife’s country of national origin. Desiness would be a meaningless absurd concept in favour of my Persian Bahá’í identity.. what I’ve learnt in the history of Indian Muslim nationalism (like with Sir Syed & Allama Iqbal) emotional catch quixotic soundbites have a surprising way of informing the discourse 50, 60 years onwards..

That’s all for now folks..

Ps: just read the comments let’s refrain from absurd comments; the safest country for Muslims is India (why not Israel come to think of it). It’s absurd; I can agree that for liberal Muslims; India & Israel have some advantages (they have nightclubs & alcohol; are generally less conservative etc). But to be a Muslim in these societies is to be distinctly second-class..

Brown Pundit tour of Pakistan

I have been to India almost 10 times and I have a deep love for my ancestral home.

However I suspect no commentator in Brown Pundits “trans-Wagah” have actually visited Pakistan. It would make for far more informed comments to actually visit the country.

My best friend’s good friend is a Marathi who did his PhD on Pakistan. He had never been to the country and my friend & I were often amused by his pronouncements (he had a ton of facts, most of them correct, about why Pakistan was so crap). When he went to Pakistan he absolutely fell in love with the country and his entire instagram feed was flooded with the beauty of Interior Sindh.

Visiting the country would do so much to get a feel for what Pakistan is since it is the object of so much speculation & fascination (Pakistan is the very flawed idealisation of the Mughal state)..

Wonderful news out of Pakistan

https://www.dawn.com/news/1393766/senate-unanimously-approves-bill-empowering-transgenders-to-determine-their-own-identity

The Senate on Wednesday unanimously approved a bill for the protection of rights of transgender persons, empowering them to determine their own gender identity.

If it goes on to become a law, the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill 2017, presented by Senator Dr Karim Khwaja, will enable trans people to be recognised as they perceive themselves and register with government offices as transgenders.

“This means that under the proposed law they would not need to appear before a medical board to decide their gender,” Chairperson of the Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights Senator Nasreen Jalil had told Dawn last month.

“The transgender community is opposed to the idea of setting up a medical board that should determine their gender fearing that they might be subjected to embarrassment and harassment. The bill provides protection to the members of transgender community and prohibits attack on their self-esteem and mistreatment,” the MQM senator had said.

No surprise it’s MQM who spearheaded the initiative.

The Rise of the RSS

Prashant’s made a fascinating that Pakistan’s constitution hates minorities so that Pakistanis don’t have to. However India needs the BJP to control minorities.

I find the Muslim minority in India to be perplexing. They should ditch the hijab, stop eating beef and integrate wherever they can. They should also only do the Azaan one Friday afternoon a week; beautifully recited by a qualified Arabic-speaker.

Of course however they must eschew Hindi whenever possible in favour of Urdu. I find it very problematic that Muslim children are learning an alien Brahminical script when they should be keeping to their Perso-Arabic heritage.

In some ways the West, Israel & India are under major strain between populism & liberal democracy. It may just be that liberal democracies work well in hegemonic majoritarian cultures not those that have large and growing (Muslim?) minorities?

No, Mughals didn’t loot India. They made us rich

Kabir alerted me to this on Facebook, “No, Mughals didn’t loot India. They made us rich.”

Let us examine India’s economic status prior to its becoming a British colony.

The Cambridge historian Angus Maddison writes in his book, Contours of the World Economy 1–2030 AD: Essays in Macro-economic History, that while India had the largest economy till 1000 AD (with a GDP share of 28.9 per cent in 1000AD) there was no economic growth. It was during the 1000 AD-1500 AD that India began to see a economic growth with its highest (20.9 per cent GDP growth rate) being under the Mughals. In the 18th century, India had overtaken China as the largest economy in the world.

The changing share of world GDP 1600–1870 (in million 1990 international $)

table-copy_091617061055.jpgSource: Angus Maddison, The World Economy, Paris: OECD, 2001, p. 261, Table B-18

In 2016, on a PPP adjusted basis, India’s was 7.2 per cent of the world GDP.In 1952, India’s GDP was 3.8 per cent. “Indeed, at the beginning of the 20th century, “the brightest jewel in the British Crown” was the poorest country in the world in terms of per capita income,” former prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh once said.

Since it’s established now that the Mughals did not take away money, let’s talk of what they invested in. They invested in infrastructure, in building great monuments which are a local and tourist draw generating crores of rupees annually. 

India at 70: Why Hindu nationalists are afraid of Mughals

Happy Women’s Day

My wife (Vidhi Lalchand, the 200th person to like the status, I was 201) is proud that Professor Nita is Indian while I am proud that she is a Bahá’ís (we belong to the same community).

Professor Nita paraphrased one of Abdul Baha’s most famous quotes: “The world of humanity has two wings—one is women and the other men,” wrote ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, “Not until both wings are equally developed can the bird fly. Should one wing remain weak, flight is impossible.”

It’s interesting that there is a preponderance of prominent female Indian scientists at Cambridge; could almost be a clustering effect!

After the jump; Annie Besant & Abdul Baha’s exchange Continue reading Happy Women’s Day

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