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'The poet Iqbal, who was influenced by Nietzche, knighted by the British colonial authorities and who evinced some admiration for the Bolshevik revolution, might seem an unlikely source of inspiration for the Supreme Guide of the Iranian revolution. Yet, such is unquestionably the case. Ayatollah Khameni, in praising Iqbal, has laid stress on the potential for a Universalist, rather than narrowly nationalist, political Islam to act as a challenge, or countervailing power, to Colonial and neo Colonial influence and aggression. This sort of universalist Islam need not be of a fundamentalist, or Salafi type. Iqbal stressed the creative power God grants to Man as his Viceregent on earth. In other words the possibility is admitted of there being a universal Muslim law- not simply a slavish adherence to Sharia- adapted to meet the needs of the evolving Muslim community across the globe which will enable the Muslims to rise up and challenge the hegemony of the West.
However History shows that such a challenge is premature- if not, as with Iqbal, actually in the interest of the Imperialists- and that it ends up enfeebling those who make it by involving their cogitations in intractable aporias.
Nevertheless, the Ayatollah has good reason to praise Iqbal. He is acknowledged as the poet-prophet of Pakistan- the creation of which, from the detritus of the British Raj, was the first tangible victory of political Islam. In contrast to al Afghani- whose polemical style singled out individual Muslim rulers felt to be not radical enough- Iqbal’s philosophy has no conspiratorial or practical application. In other words, it represents no source of danger to that class of clergymen who have done very well out of the Iranian revolution. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy, that both instances of the triumph of political Islam- however financially rewarding for their sponsors- have not weakened the West or reduced its power and influence in the region. On the contrary, if we consider the position in the Seventies- when Iran seemed poised to take over the role the British Navy had relinquished in the Sixties, and when Pakistan, drawing upon its alliance with China, seemed ready to cut the apron strings of its American patrons- we may well puzzle as to why both countries, despite substantial military spending and quite sophisticated ideological propaganda initiatives, seem more at the mercy of the West now than ever before.
Indeed, the American invasion of Iraq and more recent incursions into Pakistani territory seem an extraordinary reversal, an unparalleled humiliation, for political Islam. This is in stark contrast to the success of Alija Izetbegovich, the late Bosnian leader, in gaining help from both Iran and America, both political Islam and the liberal West, to, in effect, reverse the provisions of the Treaty of Vienna- in 1878- which transferred that territory from the Caliphate to Austro-Hungarian control.
In this context, some observers- bringing to bear an enviable erudition- are inclined to speak of political Islam as having reached a peak in the late Seventies and early Eighties and as now being in irretrievable decline. This raises a question- have socio-economic conditions so greatly changed that political Islam no longer has anything to offer? Or is it rather the case that disenchantment with the Post Colonial Nation State has continued apace leaving nothing but political Islam to fill the vacuum?
The great attraction of Islamist ideology- for those who observe the erosion, or increasing irrelevance, of traditional affiliations and identities based on clan, tribe- even language and ethnicity- is that Islam offers a sense of universal fraternity that is not complicit- in fact that has a long tradition of rebelling against- that type of colonial or neo-colonial globalization which creates Social atomization and anomie. Furthermore, in the context of mass migrations and urbanization, it may be that Nation States are less and less relevant to defining identity, or framing a shared socio-political agenda, especially where realpolitik dictates an attitude of clientism on the part of Post Colonial Nation States towards the Global Superpower.
In the past, Muslim countries were often quite keen to co-opt Political Islam to feed their own amour propre by getting up Islamic conferences at which to parade their impotence by repeating the same old meaningless platitudes and histrionic condemnations of Israel. Financial Institutions, too, jumped on the bandwagon with ‘Islamic banking’ and halal financial products. However, the utter futility and moral bankruptcy of such exercises over the last forty years does nothing but feed the sense of humiliation and resentment from which the demand for a political Islam rises up in the first place.
Islam is unique in that, unlike any other World Religion, State, Church and Commons have a common origin, a common trajectory and a common membership. The situation was very different for European Christianity. The Church had a separate origin, a separate law, a different language, and a wholly different aim from the State. In England, the Common law was further differentiated from the King’s Justice by having its own Courts, its own traditions, and developing its own militant ethos by putting forward the demand that no law be promulgated without the consent of parliament. The supremacy of the Commons, and the mercantile spirit of the middle class, was not fully established till the end of the Eighteenth Century.
In contrast, the Prophet Muhammad, p.b.u.h, a successful and widely travelled merchant, held up the legal contract and the practice of keeping meticulous accounts as being at the heart of religious life and socio-political organization. Thus, Islam has an ethos wholly favorable to the development of a Market economy and, soon after its inception, the Caliphate shared many features in common with European capitalism in its Imperialist phase.
However, at root there was this great difference that whereas in Western Europe incessant conflict between Church, State and Commons ultimately led to a more or less complete separation of powers and the development of very robust institutions of Civil Society which guarded the individual from arbitrary power- of whatever sort- in Islam this process was suspended or reversed by internecine squabbles, doctrinal disputes, barbarian invasions or the usurpation of ‘Slave’ dynasties.
In medieval Europe we observe the spectacle of great Emperors forced to kneel in expiation to the Pope. In Abbasid Baghdad, on the other hand, we see the Caliph acknowledging the venerated Imam, even appointing him his successor, but then quietly bumping him off. The fundamental concept that the Church is separate from the State- and that it alone has the power ‘to loose and bind’- did not take hold in Islamic countries. The result was that a purely spiritual, Religious, movement could suddenly turn into a bid for the throne, while secular power was regarded as a license to pronounce on matters of dogma. The history of Islam shows repeated instances of mutual contestation but no very robust tradition of separation of Church and State. The problem of the Muslim Commons- who found that Religion helped promote trade and industry and the development of Civil Law- but who could not stand together with the Ulema, who were drawn from their own class, against the despotic power of Sultans employing vast levies of war-like tribesmen- was exacerbated by the natural tendency of the Divines to turn inward, to immerse themselves in mysticism, to try to shut out the surrounding anarchy by discerning hidden realities which reflected the symmetrical glories of God. Against this background, especially in times of war or civil strife, both scholarship and enterprise tended to languish.
With respect to Islamic jurisprudence, the claim is sometimes made that reformist efforts to codify the Sharia law- whether in Ottoman Turkey or in India under the British- had the effect of foreclosing the creativity of the Islamic jurists and subjecting the legal branch to the executive. However, the parallel with Western practice is inexact on a number of points, most notably with respect to the fact that the gate to the Islamic equivalent of King’s Equity was never closed. In other words Justice was procurable either by executive firman or by legal fatwa. In both cases, the choice of the authority appealed to might materially affect the outcome. In any case, the fact that Iran has chosen to implement Islamic law in a Codified form rather than in a manner similar to Common Law suggests that the may be less to this point than has been made out.
Indeed, the modern demand for a political Islam capable of reinvigorating Islamic civilizations and restoring its position vis a vis the West derives more from an envious observation of the power and organizational strength of Western capitalism rather than from a process internal to or deriving from traditional Islamic jurisprudence and hermeneutics let alone increased trading or other links with Islamic countries. This makes for an uneasy relationship between the Islamic visionary and the Clergy. They are at cross purposes. Political Islam wants to affirm the perfection of the Revealed Laws at the same time as ignoring all that sort of thing completely in favor of vague dreams of glory. If some practical person- like those employed by the Turkish Religious Authority- says, ‘okay, you want to raise the position of women and comply the European Court of Human Rights, fine! We’ll remove any hadith which appears to go against women’s rights. The Ulema will know what to preach and we can all go forward happily’- the visionary is greatly incensed. ‘No! That’s not what I meant at all! Revelation is perfect and can’t be tampered with! You see, oh you are too stupid to see!- just take it from me that if the Imperialists and their Zionist henchman can only be humbled- which is very easy to do because they are all cowards and in any case riddled with A.I.D.S and other diseases- not of course the A.I.D.S isn’t a C.I.A conspiracy- anyway, where was I?, oh yes! You see once we defeat the Imperialists then Islam will flourish and we will regain Grenada and women will occupy a noble position and there won’t be any flies- damn them!- I mean the flies not the women- bless them for they are the mothers of the community and- kill the bastards!- I mean the flies, not the women- and anyway I must break off and go update my blog- Devil take these infernal pests!- I mean the flies not the women, never the women. No, not the women God forbid.’
Thanks to the paranoia and muddled thinking at its centre, political Islam can offer the same feeling of global fraternal comradeship offered by Communism- and the same facility in side-stepping the foolish squabbles of Nation States over irredentist claims or the treatment of minorities- not to mention any other matter of practical importance- but without having to take on board the invidious notion of the inevitability of class warfare. However, there is a fly in the ointment. It is the notion of Jihad which is all very and good if the enemy is far away. Or it was until Zawahiri and al Qaeda decided to actually go and hit that far away enemy. But why did Al Qaeda do so? The answer is that they had become nothing but hit men- assassinating great mujahids like Ahmed Shah Masood- and extortionists preying upon their own. To regain their self-respect they had engage in the far away Jihad. Not that it really enabled them to evade the Jihad close at home- viz. killing their former comrades. For this is the trouble with notions like Jihad and class warfare. Paranoia sets in. Suddenly everyone looks like a class traitor or a tool of the C.I.A or Mossad or what have you. As happened in Algeria, in the 90’s, you get a reductio ad absurdum where the true doctrine becomes ‘anyone not a jihadi is a kaffir who must be killed’- which is nothing but a licensing of infinite violence of all against all.
In Pakistan, both the Army and the political establishment have exercised caution in their handling of Jihadis. However, appeasement has only increased the Jihadis’ hubris. In some ways, this is quite understandable. Why go across the border, to be shot by the Hindus, when we can seize power for ourselves right here! After all, if we really have a chance against the Indian army, then, surely, we can defeat the Pakistani army which is much smaller! Moreover, here we are fighting on our own soil and have the home court advantage. The military analysts praised the fighting abilities of our boys who carried out the Mumbai attack. But the Indian Muslims wouldn’t give those martyrs enough ground even to be buried in! Why fight India when we can rule in Pakistan? Instead of us sacrificing our lives as the Army’s proxy, why not let them go and get themselves shot for a change!
This, in a nut-shell, is the problem with Jihadi ideology. Why be canon fodder when you can remain safely behind the lines getting a foretaste of the pleasures of Paradise? Instead of Jihad being a force multiplier for the Nation State, giving it a measure of ‘strategic depth’- why not invert the relationship? Let the soldiers defend the jihadis and the diplomats raise loans for their comfort. The ability shown by the supposedly decadent Western powers to nip terrorist plots in the bud- not to mention the horrors of ‘rendition’- have created a problem for those regimes which fostered terrorism as a for-export-only industry. Barriers to entry abroad means that the product flows back to glut the domestic market. Unless the government recognizes that this is a ‘sick industry’ requiring subsidies- thus killing it off with kindness- what is to prevent Terrorism from forming a symbiotic relationship with organized crime and the various other recognized forms of political activity and social entrepreneurship? In practice, of course, both roads must be taken. The good Taliban must be subsidized by day so as to transform into the bad Taliban who will come to blow us up by night. After all, that’s what we do with all public servants. The traffic cop draws his pay so as be in fine fettle when it comes to extorting money from us at the check-point. Criminals, too, are securely housed in prison so as to be able mastermind their extortion or other rackets while being protected at the tax payer’s expense. Jihadism, it seems, is not a cheap way of getting canon fodder. On the contrary it is a white elephant, which far from making its home amongst those you so kindly gift it to, returns home to rule the roost.
It may be argued that the above gives a distorted, or perverse, image of Jihad. The truth is that Jihad is an inward and spiritual struggle. However, political Islam finds it difficult to embrace this notion. Why? Well, the immediate answer that springs to mind is that if inward Jihad has any meaning at all- if it aint just pi-jaw and hot air- then its cultivation would be evidenced by the gaining of supernatural powers- the ability to heal, clairvoyance and so on. Indeed, there are numberless persons appearing to possess such qualities in every corner of the Islamic world. The problem is that they will heal anybody regardless of religion. How then are they different from the Hindu Godman or the Christian saint? Moreover, where the memory of such Saintly figures is venerated, a suspicion arises that Muslims are being led across the threshold of idolatry. Another reason for Political Islam to keep its distance from the Saints has to do with the manner in which, in the past, tyrants and feudal potentates have claimed descent from Holy Men to grab power and oppress the masses. Indeed, the tyrannical and intolerant Safavid dynasty- which established Shi’ia doctrine as the official religion of Iran- claimed descent from a Holy Man. The Ottoman Turks- as upholders of Sunni orthodoxy- waged war against the Safavids. Recurring hostilities between Turkey and Iran over 150 years became a factor in the devastation and neglect of the province of Iraq and the Arabian peninsula. To invest in the region would be to dangle a tempting prize in the face of one’s inveterate enemy. The development of Wahhabism- whose intellectual ancestry can be traced back to Ibn Taymiyya, who witnessed with his own eyes the terrible harm that had come to the Arabs from the Mongols- is understandable when we consider the declining position of the Arabs under Turkish, Iranian, Albanian and other overlords. Wahhabi intolerance and iconoclasm too becomes more understandable when one considers the inhuman cruelty and other excesses of the Safavids.
However, by choosing to concentrate on the Balkans, where the majority of the population was Christian, the Turks unwittingly reduced the capacity of the Islamic world to regenerate in the wake of European advances. Furthermore, the Muslim Aristocrats of this region put up some of the fiercest resistance to Turkish attempts at reform thus making inevitable a popular uprising against Turkish rule which the European powers would turn to their own advantage.
Whether or not sectarian divisions alone were to blame, the fact remains that the Ottomans and the Iranians could not unite with other Turkomen and Caucasian Muslims to counter Russian Imperialism in the north, or to come up- in partnership with Indian, Omani, or Swahili potentates- with a concerted strategy to counter European power in the Indian ocean. The result was that more and more trade routes passed out of Muslim hands. Great Islamic metropolitan centers fell on hard times. Islam acquired the name of a fatalistic religion variegated by a cloying sensuality. When the Wahhabis captured Mecca, the Ottoman asked the Egyptian Khedive to defeat them. The English, who understood the revolutionary potential of Wahhabi Islam for their Indian subjects, were only too happy to further the Khedive’s mission. However, the Khedive’s forays into the Arabian peninsula, and later Syria, did not sow the seeds of amity between the different branches of the Arab race. On the contrary, it left bitter memories of rapacity and extortion.
Political Islam can not but be aware of the manner in which sectarian and dynastic rivalries have imposed a heavy toll upon the ability of Muslim peoples to resist European Imperialism. Furthermore, the tendency of certain modernizing Muslim rulers in the nineteenth century to rely on foreign experts to rebuild their military and economic capacity on Western lines also backfired. In the case of the Egyptian Khedives, indebtedness to Western usurers enabled a sort of lightly disguised Anglo-French Imperialism to take root in Egypt. Even more grievously, the Young Turks in the Ottoman Empire- some of Jewish origin- preferred to stress ethnicity over religion- thus sowing the seeds for the Arab revolt- which in turn brought the Arabs nothing by a demeaning client status to the failing power of the British Crown.
Political Islam in India- which reached its zenith at the time of the Khilafat agitation- was soon humiliated and made to look ridiculous because, it turned out, the Turks didn’t want the restoration of the Caliphate. Henceforth they were determined to be Europeans and wanted nothing more to do with their dusky brothers in the faith. The Indian poet, Akbar Illahabadi painted a picture of the Indian Muslim intellectual- ‘payt masroof hai klerki main/ dil hai Iran aur Turki mein’- ‘ ‘Tis the belly makes necessary our clerk’s white collar / but our hearts never forsake Janissary and Ayatollah!’. But then, first Turkey, then Iran- even Afghanistan, under King Amanullah, who, seeing as he murdered his father to get the throne, was clearly very advanced in his views- turned their backs on political Islam preferring to be seen as modernizing leaders of European style Nation States busy negotiating treaties with the Great Powers. The dream of al-Afghani lay in tatters.
It is against this background that we need to understand that Iqbal- far from sponsoring political Islam as a Universal ideology, or a form of anti-Imperialism- was simply currying favor with the Imperialists by assisting their policy of ‘divide and rule’ while providing an intellectual camouflage for the creation of a modernizing Western style successor Nation State but one in which people like himself would prosper at the expense of Hindus and Sikhs. In other words, to use his own terminology, this was ‘land-hunger’ as opposed to Jihad, special pleading for a particular confessional group rather than anything to do with universal values.
This is not to say that, as E.M. Forster noted, Indian Muslims did not spend a lot of time dreaming of the vanished glories of Grenada and mourning the loss of various Balkan countries whose names one might not know but whose women were no doubt well favored. The political genius, and sheer staying power of Izetbegovich in organizing both Jihadi as well as Western support for Bosnian Muslims enabled that dream, at least in part, to turn into reality. However, it is far from clear that the rising generation- not just in Bosnia, but also Albania, Kosovo, or amongst the Muslim minority in Bulgaria- feel that the cry of Jihad still has some universal meaning. It is true that Western Intelligence Agencies have cracked down on some Jihadi networks associated with the Bosnian conflict and there is talk of a potential threat from the region. However, in light of the burgeoning power and ability of the Western Security Services to fight terrorism, as well as the increasing pre-occupation young people have with their own financial future- political Islam may not have actually been very much further advanced. Indeed, Izetbegovich’s legacy may come to be seen in his own country, as it is in the West, as not that of an Islamist but a secular humanist- a dissident imprisoned by the Communists- a brave champion of pluralistic democracy and so on and so forth.
An alternative to Jihad as having a military or a spiritual dimension may be to consider it as being primarily an organizational and propagandistic activity concerned with building what, Harvard Professor, Robert Putnam calls ‘Social Capital’- in other words social networks that increase the interconnectedness of people. The problem here is that, people have been sitting on committees and getting up resolutions and organizing conferences for decades and decades with no tangible result! Indeed, this sort of Jihad is now nothing but a careerism- a sham bureaucratic, sham academic or even sham political careerism as your taste takes you. This sort of political Islam is a costly advertisement for a product that does not exist; that can not exist because all the working capital has been used up on making the advertisement. No great harm in it, we may argue, if the West is footing the bill under the rubric of ‘multi-culturalism’ or some other such anodyne and hypocritical foolishness. Still, it is a misallocation of intellectual resources. Especially if, now, we are being asked to foot the bill ourselves. If your son- or better your daughter- your son being reserved for Medicine or Engineering- gets a scholarship to study Islam at Harvard- well and good. But what if he asks you to shell out your hard earned money so as to sit through that drivel? Is it a good way to spend your nest egg?
As for other forms of social networking- the fact is, everybody is sick and tired of the Tablighi busybody who comes round to enquire into your moral health- or pass comments on the morality of your neighbors. In the old days, especially in the Kingdom or some of the Emirates, people would put up with this because they feared the fellow had connections with the moral police. Nowadays, people have lost that fear. If you report me for possessing alcohol, I will report you for supporting al Qaeda! The bluff has been called.
If Jihad can’t be military, can’t be spiritual, can’t be organizational- then must political Islam dispense with Jihad? Is there no alternative? Or, to put it another way, what is the right outgroup- the kaffir- for political Islam to direct its venom at? The West? No, they will come and kick down your door and drag you off to Guantanomo or Abu Ghraib. Or sorry, that was under the previous administration. Now, they’ll simply send a drone to blow you up in your bed. What about some minority within our own borders? Why not pick on them? But, truthfully, can their position get any worse? In any case, thanks to past pogroms, there simply aren’t enough of them to go round. Women. Ah! Now you’re talking.
However there is a fundamental problem, for Political Islam, in adopting a misogynistic policy. The fact is, Islam was at one time in a superior position to Christianity, with respect to women’s rights, in that marriage was seen as a contractual relationship, women’s property was (at least theoretically) safeguarded and divorce- though not encouraged- was permissible. Furthermore, espousal of political Islam has often gone hand in hand with the education and empowerment of the women of the family, thus creating a constituency for itself within the educated Female elite both in Muslim countries as well as amongst the diaspora. In most Muslim societies, at least in urban centers or within the centers of power and knowledge, it is far too late to turn back the clock. Only a prolonged period of war-lordism and Talibanisation can change attitudes to women in this respect and force them out of Public life. No doubt, a cynic might say that Pakistan has already made a commendable start down that road and thus political Islam has a rosy future; however, this may be just a false dawn. What if the Taliban go on strike for better pay and conditions rather than the extra houris in Heaven we would readily grant? What if the Americans declare a victory and just pull out leaving us all to stew in our own juices? What if Israel- but no, Israel we will always have with us- and if it didn’t exist we would have to invent it- how else secure the future of political Islam?
Unless. Unless? We know what you’re going to say. You’re going to talk about a new political Islam based on movements from below- a subaltern Islam- Women, Trade Unionists, horny handed peasants, illiterate Political Scientists, starving fashion models, that smelly kid you sat next to once on the School bus, all these voices from below slowly harmonizing together to take on the burden of re-envisioning political Islam and- fex Urbis lex Orbis- from the dregs of the City will come the Light of this World.
No that wasn’t what I was going to say at all! How dare you? You’ve got it completely wrong. Well apart from that bit about the smelly kid I once sat next to on the School bus. You see, he grew up to become Imran Khan.
(S. Choudhry)
Sunday, 4 October 2009
'Her high heel shoes'- Short story
Almost twenty years ago, I moved into the ground floor flat near Earls Court station where I still live. The upstairs apartment remained empty for the first few months of my occupancy and I congratulated myself on having secured so peaceful a residence at a moderate price.
Then, everything changed. A young family moved in. I could hear the child running around on the bare wooden boards overhead and the slower clump clump of the grownups taking possession.
Some days later, my door bell rang and when I opened the door I saw a nice looking lady- to my surprise of Indian origin- along with her little daughter. These were my new neighbors and they had locked themselves out. Could they wait in my apartment till the husband returned?
I offered tea and biscuits, and we got chatting. It turned out that they were Gujerati speaking Ismailis- followers of the Aga Khan- who were born in Tanzania. More recently, after marriage, the young couple had spent the last five years running a business in Madagascar owned by a relative.
Now, again with help from their relatives, they had relocated to London and had the management of a shop close by.
Soon enough the husband turned up. He too was as voluble and forthcoming as his wife. Both were perhaps a trifle more talkative than is usual in London. I, for my part, found them charming. The little daughter, however, was a model of English reticence. I tried to interest her in a children’s book- Kipling’s Jungle book- but she seemed wary of me. However she agreed to take it with her and later on I was astonished by the fluency with which she read from it.
Around about this time, a great Ismaili conference was held in the Earls Court Centre. I realized that the young couple, in taking a flat so close to the Conference centre, had intended to use it as a base to offer hospitality to distant relatives and to network with business contacts who had flown in from the four corners of the globe to attend the event.
In a neighborly gesture, more characteristic of small town Africa than cold hearted London, the young couple made a practice of inviting me to keep their guests company. For my part, I played the role of the old bachelor Uncle who takes delight in showing off the accomplishments of the little niece- getting her to read aloud samples of improving poetry and so on.
However, one thing worried me. Saira- that was the wife’s name- had a full time job in a Travel Agency in Oxford Street. She had to rush home to cook for guests and keep everything spick and span. The husband- Karim- helped with the household chores but he spent a great part of each evening picking up people from the airport or dropping them off at the homes of relatives. Thus the burden of all this hospitality fell upon Saira alone.
One day, Karim dropped in to see me. He had big news. The shop under his management had done well. The family had now been offered something bigger and better. They would be moving soon. In conversation, it turned out that Karim and Saira had their hearts set on immigration to Canada where they had family. Indeed, the young couple had charted out their future with commendable foresight. I expressed regret at losing such wonderful neighbors. Karim’s face fell. He suddenly addressed me in Hindi- he was a big Bollywood fan- ‘Saira considers you her elder brother. You must say something. She will listen to you. Me, what can I do? I am only the husband after all.” His face was a mask of tragedy.
“What must I say?”
“The high heel shoes! Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed it. Everybody always comments. I mean to say, it is all right when a lady goes to office to wear fashionable shoes. But there is a limit. What for she is wearing high heel shoes at home? It is a childishness. You know how people talk.”
“My dear, Karim, your thinking is appropriate for Africa. This is London. Here style is king. Ladies are wearing high heel shoe at all time. As for U.S and Canada- they are even more advanced. Arre, I am telling you, nowadays- Bombay, Ahmedabad, Surat- India is also changing. Women have to obey fashion rules. Believe me you are worrying for nothing.”
Karim looked at me bitterly. “Bhai Sahib, you don’t know. At the end of day, when she takes of shoes, the pain is so much she cries. She tries to hide it from me but I know. Can you imagine the hurt it is causing me? Yet however much I remonstrate she will not listen to me. You only can do something. After all, here in London, which other brother does she have?”
Next evening, after the guests had gone, I said to Saira- ‘Sit down. We need to talk.’
She came and sat down but there was resentment in her eyes. Resentment or perhaps pain from those damn high heel shoes. As a bachelor, I don’t notice much about women. But, that evening, I had noticed that far from making her more graceful and stylish, her high heel shoes made her clumsy and awkward. Karim was right. In fact, he was more than right. He thought she should only wear these shoes to the office. Actually, at least in London, there was no need for her to wear them at all. She could wear comfort shoes. After all, the Feminist movement had some achievements to its credit. As things stood, Saira was martyring herself for no reason except a childish whim- or perhaps a small town African ideal of European sophistication.
In my bumbling, bachelor Uncle, manner I began lecturing her. She got the gist immediately. Her face fell. For a moment, exhaustion overcame her. Then, she looked at me bitterly.
“If I take off these shoes, you will be happy?”
“Yes!”
“No, some more time, I must wear them.”
“Why?”
“You know what everyone says about me? They say she is a nice lady but crazy on high heel shoes. Coming from Africa she did not even know how to wear them properly. That is why she ruined her feet. That is what they will say at the time of my daughter’s wedding. Not that I will be wearing high heel shoes then- but, you see, the damage will have been done. I will be remembered as a warning to young girls.”
“I don’t understand. “
“Brother, I was born with this deformity of the feet. Now people are visiting this house- people whose opinion will matter when it comes time to arrange my daughter’s marriage- which is better? That they remember me as having lamed myself by a foolish passion for stylish shoes or that they say ‘there is a deformity in that family. It may come out in the grand-children. Better chose another girl.”
All that happened almost twenty years ago. Now their daughter is married I can tell you the story. Also there is a personal secret I want to unburden myself off. You see, twenty years ago, I was an atheist. Though I never touched Saira’s feet, I wanted to. That set me on the path back to the devotional piety of my ancestors. However, my writing in English- it seems to me- is like Saira’s high heel shoes. What I can’t understand is- for the benefit of whose marriage am I suffering this hurt?
Then, everything changed. A young family moved in. I could hear the child running around on the bare wooden boards overhead and the slower clump clump of the grownups taking possession.
Some days later, my door bell rang and when I opened the door I saw a nice looking lady- to my surprise of Indian origin- along with her little daughter. These were my new neighbors and they had locked themselves out. Could they wait in my apartment till the husband returned?
I offered tea and biscuits, and we got chatting. It turned out that they were Gujerati speaking Ismailis- followers of the Aga Khan- who were born in Tanzania. More recently, after marriage, the young couple had spent the last five years running a business in Madagascar owned by a relative.
Now, again with help from their relatives, they had relocated to London and had the management of a shop close by.
Soon enough the husband turned up. He too was as voluble and forthcoming as his wife. Both were perhaps a trifle more talkative than is usual in London. I, for my part, found them charming. The little daughter, however, was a model of English reticence. I tried to interest her in a children’s book- Kipling’s Jungle book- but she seemed wary of me. However she agreed to take it with her and later on I was astonished by the fluency with which she read from it.
Around about this time, a great Ismaili conference was held in the Earls Court Centre. I realized that the young couple, in taking a flat so close to the Conference centre, had intended to use it as a base to offer hospitality to distant relatives and to network with business contacts who had flown in from the four corners of the globe to attend the event.
In a neighborly gesture, more characteristic of small town Africa than cold hearted London, the young couple made a practice of inviting me to keep their guests company. For my part, I played the role of the old bachelor Uncle who takes delight in showing off the accomplishments of the little niece- getting her to read aloud samples of improving poetry and so on.
However, one thing worried me. Saira- that was the wife’s name- had a full time job in a Travel Agency in Oxford Street. She had to rush home to cook for guests and keep everything spick and span. The husband- Karim- helped with the household chores but he spent a great part of each evening picking up people from the airport or dropping them off at the homes of relatives. Thus the burden of all this hospitality fell upon Saira alone.
One day, Karim dropped in to see me. He had big news. The shop under his management had done well. The family had now been offered something bigger and better. They would be moving soon. In conversation, it turned out that Karim and Saira had their hearts set on immigration to Canada where they had family. Indeed, the young couple had charted out their future with commendable foresight. I expressed regret at losing such wonderful neighbors. Karim’s face fell. He suddenly addressed me in Hindi- he was a big Bollywood fan- ‘Saira considers you her elder brother. You must say something. She will listen to you. Me, what can I do? I am only the husband after all.” His face was a mask of tragedy.
“What must I say?”
“The high heel shoes! Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed it. Everybody always comments. I mean to say, it is all right when a lady goes to office to wear fashionable shoes. But there is a limit. What for she is wearing high heel shoes at home? It is a childishness. You know how people talk.”
“My dear, Karim, your thinking is appropriate for Africa. This is London. Here style is king. Ladies are wearing high heel shoe at all time. As for U.S and Canada- they are even more advanced. Arre, I am telling you, nowadays- Bombay, Ahmedabad, Surat- India is also changing. Women have to obey fashion rules. Believe me you are worrying for nothing.”
Karim looked at me bitterly. “Bhai Sahib, you don’t know. At the end of day, when she takes of shoes, the pain is so much she cries. She tries to hide it from me but I know. Can you imagine the hurt it is causing me? Yet however much I remonstrate she will not listen to me. You only can do something. After all, here in London, which other brother does she have?”
Next evening, after the guests had gone, I said to Saira- ‘Sit down. We need to talk.’
She came and sat down but there was resentment in her eyes. Resentment or perhaps pain from those damn high heel shoes. As a bachelor, I don’t notice much about women. But, that evening, I had noticed that far from making her more graceful and stylish, her high heel shoes made her clumsy and awkward. Karim was right. In fact, he was more than right. He thought she should only wear these shoes to the office. Actually, at least in London, there was no need for her to wear them at all. She could wear comfort shoes. After all, the Feminist movement had some achievements to its credit. As things stood, Saira was martyring herself for no reason except a childish whim- or perhaps a small town African ideal of European sophistication.
In my bumbling, bachelor Uncle, manner I began lecturing her. She got the gist immediately. Her face fell. For a moment, exhaustion overcame her. Then, she looked at me bitterly.
“If I take off these shoes, you will be happy?”
“Yes!”
“No, some more time, I must wear them.”
“Why?”
“You know what everyone says about me? They say she is a nice lady but crazy on high heel shoes. Coming from Africa she did not even know how to wear them properly. That is why she ruined her feet. That is what they will say at the time of my daughter’s wedding. Not that I will be wearing high heel shoes then- but, you see, the damage will have been done. I will be remembered as a warning to young girls.”
“I don’t understand. “
“Brother, I was born with this deformity of the feet. Now people are visiting this house- people whose opinion will matter when it comes time to arrange my daughter’s marriage- which is better? That they remember me as having lamed myself by a foolish passion for stylish shoes or that they say ‘there is a deformity in that family. It may come out in the grand-children. Better chose another girl.”
All that happened almost twenty years ago. Now their daughter is married I can tell you the story. Also there is a personal secret I want to unburden myself off. You see, twenty years ago, I was an atheist. Though I never touched Saira’s feet, I wanted to. That set me on the path back to the devotional piety of my ancestors. However, my writing in English- it seems to me- is like Saira’s high heel shoes. What I can’t understand is- for the benefit of whose marriage am I suffering this hurt?
The Caste system- economics or religion
The Indian caste system- economics or religion?
As a responsible Hindu I feel im my religious duty to add to the nonsense written about the caste system by making a couple of points, not I believe, highlighted elsewhere-
1) India was a mixed regime economy with a metropolitan cash nexus parallel to a system of non-monetized specialisation & division of labour where agicultural land and surpluses were periodically redistributed according to some ill-defined communal collective bargaining which more often than not meant whole sub-castes (endogamous occupational groups called jatis) voting with their feet. During exogenous monetary shocks/ natural disasters the unmonetized jati system of specialisation and exchange was the default value. It kept things ticking over and allowed the clearing of new land and rural settlement with low capital investment but the full complement of services. Theoretically, endogamy was supposed to facillitate the diffusion of new techniques of production and thus raise productivity. Religion tends to say what IS is right. God wants it that way. Vedic Hindu religion was particularly suitable for this because it emphasised the equality of all paths to the deity- i.e. the notion that utterly opposite codes of behaviour (customary morality) were equally valid. This lead to the notion that every occupational jati was engaged in an imitatio dei- i.e. the potter feels God is a potter & hence derives a psychic satisfaction from making pots, the thief reckons God is the ultimate thief etc. Hence each jati reckons it alone is supreme because it is wholly engaged in God's quintessential activity. Thus each jati develops its own spirituality and (the inevitable corrollary) coercive system.
2) The metropolitan cash nexus, when supported by State power used for extraction of surpluses, does not in its expansion dissolve the default system, but leeches resources off it causing it to crash. This is because the initial rise in productivity incident on monetisation is ultimately swamped by ecological degradation, fiscal incentive incompatability, and Social Capital failure arising from collapse of public good provision. The metropolitan cash nexus esperiences a tulip bust and learns fear of a more fundamental collapse affecting every aspect of Socialisation. Fear of the crash means the metropolitan cash nexus ultimately resurrects jati as varna (legitimating ideology for social stratification).
3) Only if the State becomes effective in provision of public goods at the village level can the crashing default system be expunged from the directory. However, if the State is dependent on its survival on the crisis of the default system- i.e. it is a protest against what it perpetuates- this aint gonna happen.
4) Though jati type caste appears to be, under ideal conditions, a co-operative solution that would dominate competitive solutions- giving rise to dreams of 'Ramrajya'. Gandhian village swaraj, Buddhist Socialism, Vandana Siva styleEco-Feminism etc- this is just a pipe dream. It is not productivity that rises but the amount of time people spend in 'consciousness raising' and other such magical practices. Sure, this may attract outside funding- but it aint sustainable as a universal panacea unless they like hit upon a better class of recreational drug or find a way to intensify orgasm or something.
5) Caste in present day India is about people from larger jatis taking power by claiming to speak for smaller jatis that have, arbitrarily, been adjudged to be of equally low status. It represents a redistribution of wealth from the poorest to the richest in these arbitrarily defined 'castes'. This is not done in a Pareto efficient way. Rather there is a huge and growing deadweight cost to the whole economy. The rich can escape this, because, in India, increased life chances equals increased elasticity of supply and demand (i.e. the rich can always get what they want by circumventing the system. Not just a Black Economy, India has always had (infinitely many!) Anti-States, Anti-Commons, Anti-Relgions (as well as Anti-Anti-States etc) simoultaneous memberships of which is the path to thrive.
5) Some social customs can (only if everyone is very good in the first place) internalise externalities, improve Schelling focal point choices, turn prisoner dillemmas into positive sum games etc, etc. But why bring caste into it? The English word caste dervies from the Portugese and Spanish notion that degree of miscegenation determines 'nature' and hence ought to determine social status. Does anyone believe that sort of racial nonsense anymore?
6) One good point about jati-dharma (caste based religion) is that it recognises that from the moral point of view there is a huge range of choices which are equally acceptable. However,some modern Hindus believe that their own vegetarian jati-dharma is the universal morality and seek to convert everybody to an irrational and socially very costly (and potentially environmentally disasterous) code of conduct. But the same point applies to Islam, missionary Christianity, Eco-feminism, Marxism, Hitler worship etc.
Caste is crap. However economic analysis of its causes and consequences should continue so as to prevent history books from spouting silly conspiracy theories- the Brahmins did it! No, it was the British. Actually, you're both wrong- it was the lizard people from Planet X.
nuff said
As a responsible Hindu I feel im my religious duty to add to the nonsense written about the caste system by making a couple of points, not I believe, highlighted elsewhere-
1) India was a mixed regime economy with a metropolitan cash nexus parallel to a system of non-monetized specialisation & division of labour where agicultural land and surpluses were periodically redistributed according to some ill-defined communal collective bargaining which more often than not meant whole sub-castes (endogamous occupational groups called jatis) voting with their feet. During exogenous monetary shocks/ natural disasters the unmonetized jati system of specialisation and exchange was the default value. It kept things ticking over and allowed the clearing of new land and rural settlement with low capital investment but the full complement of services. Theoretically, endogamy was supposed to facillitate the diffusion of new techniques of production and thus raise productivity. Religion tends to say what IS is right. God wants it that way. Vedic Hindu religion was particularly suitable for this because it emphasised the equality of all paths to the deity- i.e. the notion that utterly opposite codes of behaviour (customary morality) were equally valid. This lead to the notion that every occupational jati was engaged in an imitatio dei- i.e. the potter feels God is a potter & hence derives a psychic satisfaction from making pots, the thief reckons God is the ultimate thief etc. Hence each jati reckons it alone is supreme because it is wholly engaged in God's quintessential activity. Thus each jati develops its own spirituality and (the inevitable corrollary) coercive system.
2) The metropolitan cash nexus, when supported by State power used for extraction of surpluses, does not in its expansion dissolve the default system, but leeches resources off it causing it to crash. This is because the initial rise in productivity incident on monetisation is ultimately swamped by ecological degradation, fiscal incentive incompatability, and Social Capital failure arising from collapse of public good provision. The metropolitan cash nexus esperiences a tulip bust and learns fear of a more fundamental collapse affecting every aspect of Socialisation. Fear of the crash means the metropolitan cash nexus ultimately resurrects jati as varna (legitimating ideology for social stratification).
3) Only if the State becomes effective in provision of public goods at the village level can the crashing default system be expunged from the directory. However, if the State is dependent on its survival on the crisis of the default system- i.e. it is a protest against what it perpetuates- this aint gonna happen.
4) Though jati type caste appears to be, under ideal conditions, a co-operative solution that would dominate competitive solutions- giving rise to dreams of 'Ramrajya'. Gandhian village swaraj, Buddhist Socialism, Vandana Siva styleEco-Feminism etc- this is just a pipe dream. It is not productivity that rises but the amount of time people spend in 'consciousness raising' and other such magical practices. Sure, this may attract outside funding- but it aint sustainable as a universal panacea unless they like hit upon a better class of recreational drug or find a way to intensify orgasm or something.
5) Caste in present day India is about people from larger jatis taking power by claiming to speak for smaller jatis that have, arbitrarily, been adjudged to be of equally low status. It represents a redistribution of wealth from the poorest to the richest in these arbitrarily defined 'castes'. This is not done in a Pareto efficient way. Rather there is a huge and growing deadweight cost to the whole economy. The rich can escape this, because, in India, increased life chances equals increased elasticity of supply and demand (i.e. the rich can always get what they want by circumventing the system. Not just a Black Economy, India has always had (infinitely many!) Anti-States, Anti-Commons, Anti-Relgions (as well as Anti-Anti-States etc) simoultaneous memberships of which is the path to thrive.
5) Some social customs can (only if everyone is very good in the first place) internalise externalities, improve Schelling focal point choices, turn prisoner dillemmas into positive sum games etc, etc. But why bring caste into it? The English word caste dervies from the Portugese and Spanish notion that degree of miscegenation determines 'nature' and hence ought to determine social status. Does anyone believe that sort of racial nonsense anymore?
6) One good point about jati-dharma (caste based religion) is that it recognises that from the moral point of view there is a huge range of choices which are equally acceptable. However,some modern Hindus believe that their own vegetarian jati-dharma is the universal morality and seek to convert everybody to an irrational and socially very costly (and potentially environmentally disasterous) code of conduct. But the same point applies to Islam, missionary Christianity, Eco-feminism, Marxism, Hitler worship etc.
Caste is crap. However economic analysis of its causes and consequences should continue so as to prevent history books from spouting silly conspiracy theories- the Brahmins did it! No, it was the British. Actually, you're both wrong- it was the lizard people from Planet X.
nuff said
Indglish & English literature
Indglish literature
Indian fiction in English
To understand Indglish writing, we first need to look at why English literature, from its inception as national project, should so concern itself with exotic locales
England is believed to be the first 'modern' country in the sense of permitting the hegemony of a literate middle class whose vehicle to class power- following the Black Death and the ensuing crisis of Serfdom- was the championing of a deontic legalistic civil society that could protect a mode of production based on the hiring of factors of production and their combination according to rational calculation and scientific choice of technique. In order to legitimate their hegemony, the English middle class was determined to display infinite plasticity & porosity as characteristic of their vernacular- making a spatial rather than temporal claim of universality on its behalf- by seeking to adorn it with all the ornaments of prestigious ancient and modern languages anywhere. Thus, the English language reacts to meeting with any foreign culture or language -which has any sort claim to privilige- by not an agon but mimesis- i.e. an attempt to show that the exotic bloom can be made natal to the genius of their own country or Empire. Indeed, on encountering India & Persia, English very rapidly developed a lush 'oriental' literature- think Tom Moore, Southey etc- which 'Native' Anglophone Indians would later appear to be imitating- but this with the naive charm of the 'Native'- for authenticity read backwardness- permitting the metropolitan audience to once again indulge in a discredited, obsolete, genre on the grounds that since the 'Native' is speaking (and since 'Natives' are never listened to, they only ever speak 'for the first time') it aint the old infantile mush being recycled but something at once exotic and 'universal'. By this analysis the ultimate Indglish author is Indrani Aikath Gyaltsen who simply plagiarised some second rate rural chick lit English author from the 50's and presented it as a picture of a life in an Indian village! American critics- not all in obeisance to 'aesthetic affirmative action'- were quick to coo over Indrani's 'Crane's Morning' but Indrani, forgetting that old adage- kiya sharam to foota karam- for shame if you blush, the miracle turns to mush- dear dotty Indrani has gone and went and committed suicide rather than proudly claiming her place at the apex of the Indglish pantheon, but then- what to do?- she actually lived in India- never a good idea for an Indglish author- where plagiarism is attributed to a poverty of ideas- rather than post modern hi jinks- and thus still considered shameful.
Anyway getting back to the story of why English literature is so interested in exotic locales- an analysis we must complete in order to arrive at a proper taxonomy of Indglish literature- the second major motivating force has to do with the search for Utopia- i.e. the location of a society which has, in some respect, superior mores from some point of view. Here the locus classicus would be 'The Empire of the Nairs- an Eutopian romance' by James Lawrence which focused on the freedom and high position of women within the aristocratic Nair community of Malabar. Shelley was greatly influenced by this book.
As far as Indglish novels go- I think responsible writers do wish to present some of the virtues of Indian family and social life- not to mention religion and spirituality- in a form which could be helpful or inspiring to other people and communities. However, this effort has been entirely in vain because of the low character and tamsic mindset of publishers, reviewers and academics. Furthermore, since democratic India offers so many diverse avenues for individual and social metanoia- i.e. self- expression and social action- worthwhile people simply aren't going to waste time trying to turn back the tide in this respect. This is a pity because Indian literature is didactic and excels in the depiction of ideal characters. However, Indglish authors are entirely ignorant of the correct mimamsa of Shruti, Smriti & Kavya. Actually, vernacular language authors, too, are pretty crap in this respect- but that is forgivable because like maybe they're proto-Marxists or marsupial Feminists or something. Anyway, this type of Indglish fiction may exist but it aint going to get published or if it is published it aint going to get reviewed or if it is reviewed its gonna get panned or if it isnt panned it will probably turn out not be Indglish at all but like fucking French or something.
The third reason for English to cover exotic locales has to do with making money, gaining power- and accumulating, organising, and deploying information towards that end. Because of the scandal of English's lack of, or strategic turning its back on, a home grown Mimamsa- which turned its practice of poetry into a reverse poiesis- a reverse kenosis- thus endowing its foundational character as a hypertrophying cancer of expression rather than an evolving organ of ever more subtle intuition- oracular only in prescribing the ubuquity of the faking of a sensibility rather than truly metanoiac in harmonising with dike's dhvani- the inter-sujective's historic system of echoes and reverberations- and thus destructive of public paideia for being constructed as a nexus of pleonexia; creative only of a Theophrastian chrematistics not an Aristotelian economy of tradition- but, what am I complaining about anyway?- afterall, this is the really exciting 'merging of horizons' that Indglish offers us 'breath blinded mirrors' of Rishis and Pirs. It is here that the question 'can the subaltern speak?' is answered by everybody 'shitting higher than their arsehole' as Wittgenstien so charmingly put it. This is where we can all make a contribution- this is the reason vernacular poets and novelists ultimately come to covet the English language; for here- indeed- is renewed the ancient Jatra of the gadarene swine- & not exotic at all, Indglish literature turns out to be the very veil of the Weltgeist whose Apocalypse is the Overload of the Information Age.
Anyway that's why my novels are crap. What's your excuse?
Indian fiction in English
To understand Indglish writing, we first need to look at why English literature, from its inception as national project, should so concern itself with exotic locales
England is believed to be the first 'modern' country in the sense of permitting the hegemony of a literate middle class whose vehicle to class power- following the Black Death and the ensuing crisis of Serfdom- was the championing of a deontic legalistic civil society that could protect a mode of production based on the hiring of factors of production and their combination according to rational calculation and scientific choice of technique. In order to legitimate their hegemony, the English middle class was determined to display infinite plasticity & porosity as characteristic of their vernacular- making a spatial rather than temporal claim of universality on its behalf- by seeking to adorn it with all the ornaments of prestigious ancient and modern languages anywhere. Thus, the English language reacts to meeting with any foreign culture or language -which has any sort claim to privilige- by not an agon but mimesis- i.e. an attempt to show that the exotic bloom can be made natal to the genius of their own country or Empire. Indeed, on encountering India & Persia, English very rapidly developed a lush 'oriental' literature- think Tom Moore, Southey etc- which 'Native' Anglophone Indians would later appear to be imitating- but this with the naive charm of the 'Native'- for authenticity read backwardness- permitting the metropolitan audience to once again indulge in a discredited, obsolete, genre on the grounds that since the 'Native' is speaking (and since 'Natives' are never listened to, they only ever speak 'for the first time') it aint the old infantile mush being recycled but something at once exotic and 'universal'. By this analysis the ultimate Indglish author is Indrani Aikath Gyaltsen who simply plagiarised some second rate rural chick lit English author from the 50's and presented it as a picture of a life in an Indian village! American critics- not all in obeisance to 'aesthetic affirmative action'- were quick to coo over Indrani's 'Crane's Morning' but Indrani, forgetting that old adage- kiya sharam to foota karam- for shame if you blush, the miracle turns to mush- dear dotty Indrani has gone and went and committed suicide rather than proudly claiming her place at the apex of the Indglish pantheon, but then- what to do?- she actually lived in India- never a good idea for an Indglish author- where plagiarism is attributed to a poverty of ideas- rather than post modern hi jinks- and thus still considered shameful.
Anyway getting back to the story of why English literature is so interested in exotic locales- an analysis we must complete in order to arrive at a proper taxonomy of Indglish literature- the second major motivating force has to do with the search for Utopia- i.e. the location of a society which has, in some respect, superior mores from some point of view. Here the locus classicus would be 'The Empire of the Nairs- an Eutopian romance' by James Lawrence which focused on the freedom and high position of women within the aristocratic Nair community of Malabar. Shelley was greatly influenced by this book.
As far as Indglish novels go- I think responsible writers do wish to present some of the virtues of Indian family and social life- not to mention religion and spirituality- in a form which could be helpful or inspiring to other people and communities. However, this effort has been entirely in vain because of the low character and tamsic mindset of publishers, reviewers and academics. Furthermore, since democratic India offers so many diverse avenues for individual and social metanoia- i.e. self- expression and social action- worthwhile people simply aren't going to waste time trying to turn back the tide in this respect. This is a pity because Indian literature is didactic and excels in the depiction of ideal characters. However, Indglish authors are entirely ignorant of the correct mimamsa of Shruti, Smriti & Kavya. Actually, vernacular language authors, too, are pretty crap in this respect- but that is forgivable because like maybe they're proto-Marxists or marsupial Feminists or something. Anyway, this type of Indglish fiction may exist but it aint going to get published or if it is published it aint going to get reviewed or if it is reviewed its gonna get panned or if it isnt panned it will probably turn out not be Indglish at all but like fucking French or something.
The third reason for English to cover exotic locales has to do with making money, gaining power- and accumulating, organising, and deploying information towards that end. Because of the scandal of English's lack of, or strategic turning its back on, a home grown Mimamsa- which turned its practice of poetry into a reverse poiesis- a reverse kenosis- thus endowing its foundational character as a hypertrophying cancer of expression rather than an evolving organ of ever more subtle intuition- oracular only in prescribing the ubuquity of the faking of a sensibility rather than truly metanoiac in harmonising with dike's dhvani- the inter-sujective's historic system of echoes and reverberations- and thus destructive of public paideia for being constructed as a nexus of pleonexia; creative only of a Theophrastian chrematistics not an Aristotelian economy of tradition- but, what am I complaining about anyway?- afterall, this is the really exciting 'merging of horizons' that Indglish offers us 'breath blinded mirrors' of Rishis and Pirs. It is here that the question 'can the subaltern speak?' is answered by everybody 'shitting higher than their arsehole' as Wittgenstien so charmingly put it. This is where we can all make a contribution- this is the reason vernacular poets and novelists ultimately come to covet the English language; for here- indeed- is renewed the ancient Jatra of the gadarene swine- & not exotic at all, Indglish literature turns out to be the very veil of the Weltgeist whose Apocalypse is the Overload of the Information Age.
Anyway that's why my novels are crap. What's your excuse?
riddle of the Uttrarakanda
The riddle of the Uttarakanda explained- Lord Ram’s anukrosha
There was a tendency in the Nineties for number of Western writers and academics (e.g. Fred Halliday, Karen Armstrong, etc) to ascribe to ’Hindu fundamentalists’ a desire to ’turn Lord Rama into a vengeful Father God’ - i.e. Yahweh- and thus impose an Abrahamic Monotheism on a previously heteronomously (ie. superstitiously) polytheistic populace. According to this view, the demand that India should be called ’Bharat’is also a sinister part of the conspiracy because the Bharat after whom our country is named is not (as you and I innocently assumed) the son of Sakuntala but ’the step-brother of Lord Rama’ (this last piece of idiocy from our own beloved Gayatri Spivak Chakroboty who claims to know Sanskrit and be of Brahmin caste! If you don’t believe me, check her ’Critique of Post Colonial Reason)
Strangely, few seem to pick up on the relationship between Ram and Abram- though it might lend a sort of sinister conviction to their claim.
The uttara kanda portion of the Ramayana is not really a puzzle. What is puzzling is how a previous generation of great Indians totally got it wrong. Thus Rajaji says that the Uttara Kanda is not canonical but perhaps an interpolation reflecting the tragic lives of our womenfolk- i.e. Rajaji is accepting the Colonialist view that Hinduism is basically about making women miserable, just as Gandhiji accepted Katherine Mayo’s view that India’s main problem- and the reason it could not legitimately take up arms to liberate itself- was MASTURBATION. Only the peasants toiling in the fields- Mayo tells us- have not ruined themselves utterly through self-abuse- but only because the ryots under the benevolent British Raj are too emaciated and undernourished to muster up an ejaculation.
What is the key utterance of the uttara kanda? It is this. The barber says ’I am not Rama’. But if the barber is not Rama then Ramrajya is just Rama’s Raj not democracy. So long as there are two moralities- one for the Ruler another for the Subjects- there is no democracy. True Ram’s throne was nothing but the love of the people. Tulsi tells us-
Danda jatinha kara bheda jahan nartaka nrtya samaaja
Jeetahu manahi sunia asa Raamacandra ken raaja!
(Much prattles the Machiavellian parrot of Stick & Carrot, Divide and Rule
But Love’s plural dance of Ego-conquest was Ramrajya’s only tool!)
How then could Lord Rama change the husband’s suspicious nature with respect to his wife?- i.e how stop the fool from destroying his own happiness? How change Society’s attitude to the return of the wandered wife? (What if it was not your sister-in-law but your sister who had been abducted or gone astray?) Since Lord Rama was the one most beloved, he had to inflict this pain on himself so that through anukrosha all beings could advance. This is the King as pharmakos- the scapegoat- who takes on all the evils of the realm so as to free his subjects from them. However the Greek and Hebrew pharmakos just ended with the slaughter of some dumb animal. The true pharmakos is to take on suffering not for death- death is easy, ask any suicide bomber- but for the sake of knowledge, for true knowledge- as Aeschylus saw- comes only through suffering.
But what is this saving knowledge? The answer addresses the most basic anxiety humans have- what Freud called the ’fort da’ problem- object permanence & abandonment issues- the baby’s anxiety that the mother ceases to exist when not visible. Baby’s anger at the mother when she returns- baby’s refusal to play and turning angrily away for not having forgiven the mother for ceasing to exist.
Now Indian poets had long ago made the equation between the viyogini (woman separated from lover) and the yogini (woman in mystic trance) both do not eat, are turned away from the input of the senses, have single pointed concentration etc.
Thus emotional dualism is the same as intellectual monism. Puranic and Upanishadic Religion cash out as each other.
Why is this important? It means there is a bridge between absence and presence, existence and non-existence. Thus Ramrajya does not depend on whether Rama lives or dies, is exiled or enthroned. real or imaginary.
Uttara Kanda is political. Why? Because it prescribes absoulute reciprocity and symmetry between all agents. There are no priviliged frames of reference or points of view. To quote Brahma Sutra aphorism 3.3.37- vyatihaaraha, visinsanthi hiitaravat- ’Scripture prescribes reciprocity between worshipper and worshipped’
From the point of view of both information theory and our own mimamsa- memory, love, and ’identity’ are disequilibrium phenomena- but this negentropy is life and so says Valmiki, though presently breath-blinded, the mirror of salvation.
To end let me quote Aziz Mian Qawwall’s ’Ram tera gorakh dandha’- ’Aaa Ram! Aaram.’
Saturday, 3 October 2009
National Bourgeoisies and Bildungburgertums
In traditional Marxist thinking, the National Bourgeoisie are the native merchants who supply local markets rather than the evil compradors who are involved in International Trade through a tie-up with big Multi-Nationals. The Marxists favoured an alliance with the National Bourgeoisie because they believed that they would be hostile to the (Western) Metropolitan Capitalist powers and harbour a desire to industrialize rapidly so as to cease their Nation's humiliating dependence on foreign imports.
The Bildungsburgertum- the 'educated middle class'- were sprung from the same origins as the National Bourgeoisie. Their big shtick was import substituition with reference to ideas, intellectual capital, rather than manufactured goods. Their usefulness, to the National Bourgeoisie was in building bridges to the masses- whom they proclaimed the living incarnation of not incorrigible ignorance (as appeared to be the case) but the apotheosis of truly transcendental knowledge- and their seducing the yokels with a romantic, emotionally highly coloured, chauvinistic, irredentist, nationalism whose great utility was that it valorised and increased opportunities for the peasants' favourite past-times- viz. gang-rape and arson (Murder being viewed more as an obligation than a recreation in traditional societies).
Taken together, the National Bourgeoisie and the Bildungsburgertum, have a unique capacity, even under conditions of stasis, even without exogenous shocks- to really fuck up their own countries big time- economically and politically- as well as contributing to regional instability and a sort of permanent constituency for World War.
Why? Because the 'World Historic Mission' of both classes is based on mindless mendacity, a heartless lie.
Home produced sugar really isn't morally better than imported sugar- it's just sugar. Who produces the sugar should be decided by the principle of comparative advantage. That way, if the terms of trade are right (a condition the free working of the market might occasionally ensure) everybody has more sugar than they did before. This is called the gains from trade.
The National Bourgeoisie are in favour of home produced sugar because they want a closed market they can exploit. Now, it's no good saying, "Ah! Well if we have a National Planning Directorate to impose discipline then surely an import substitution strategy can be allocatively efficient in some long run (i.e. mythical) sense." Why? Because the rejoinder is- if you really have people who can enforce discipline and make plans fuck you need the Bourgeiosie for? Kick em to the curb.
The answer, I suppose would be- 'we need the Bourgeoisie for capital and management expertise and I dunno liberal democracy blah blah.'
Experience shows that isn't the case. The National Bourgeoisies take capital from goverments, mis-manage the industries they set up (taking advantage of their monopoly status in local markets) ignore any rules they don't like- and still end up worse off- in terms of rates of return- than they would have been under competitive discipline.
Import substitution under these conditions- i.e.with capital rationing, barriers to entry, etc- isn't incentive compatible. The leftists may speak of Agency Capture as the root of the problem but the truth is that any Bureaucratic regime is going to give rise to a class of fixers, a culture of fraud, from which, it is true, Ambanis might Phoenix like arise- but not as upholders of the haut bourgeois cultural values for which (truth be told) the Leftists alone have nostalgia.
When it comes to ideas, however, the dangers of import substitution are much graver, thus rendering- counter-intuitively- the National Bildungburgertums even more dangerous than their Bourgeois cousins. How so? Why?
Well, put it this way;- why use a foreign operating system which wasn't designed with your needs in mind- which has a lot of bloatware leading to slow startup- and which only works well half of the time when, instead,if you are any sort of patriot, you can purchase, for just a few dollars more, a 100 % domestically produced operating system- designed by organically farmed lesbian goats- which is guaranteed to totally shred your computer from a distance of 15 yards- especially seeing as you would have already had the good sense to swap your motherboard for a brick of weed and if that isn't a good enough reason for not bringing in your project on time, what is?
Put another way, the substitution of home-grown nonsense for foreign nonsense is dangerous. Why? Well by crediting the guy who first came up with an idea- even if he was a 'dead white male'- you gain the enormous advantage of being able to track back and see what mistakes he made. Why he was wrong. To reverse engineer intellectual capital may seem a way to fix bugs- it isn't. It's disabling History's firewall is all it is.
Though some people- like Kirshner in Argentina a few years ago- are mewing for a return of the National Bourgeoisie to save us from the horrors of neo-liberalism- what does that actually mean? No doubt, the Argentinian Moon is better than the American Moon but business is still just business, work is still just work, sugar is still just sugar and ultimately History still just History.
It has nothing to do with your adolescent sexual frustrations or childhood inferiority complexes- in other words precisely the stuff that fuels the Bildungsburgertum. In the same way that Art is what happens when the Artist, briefly, escapes his pathology, forgets his 'project'- why he has to be an Artist- who exactly is on his shit-list; so too is Development something which happens when you're not talking about it but cultivating your own garden. Indeed, and with equal truth, the same might be said for International Peace, International Prosperity and International something else which begins with P like I dunno mebbe under-Pants-reinforcing (an important problem according to the B.B.C's Jeremy Paxman).
In thinking about a big country like India we have to add a further twist- there is a State, an anti-State, an anti-anti-State and so on. Even community, every class interest, every mode of production- no matter how narrowly defined has a double, a shadow, a 'black' component. Indeed, the degree to which we belong to 'Civil Society' often depends on the degree to which we have a countervailing connection with its opposite. In these circumstances only the ignorant are savants, only the philistines are poets, and only the expats the true inheritors of the grand traditions of the Indian Bildungburgertum.
Order your copy now of my epic novel- 'War & Piss'- a study of the impact of the Napoleonic Wars on my chronic bed wetting in early Nineteenth Century Russia.
Sunday, 20 September 2009
Subject: Entrance exam for K.G class of ’07- St. Columba’s School
I have recently completed work on the kunji for the entrance exam to the Kindergarden Class of my old Convent School.
Here is a sample of my model answer to the Epistemology & Metaphysics Paper (2007)
Q. "Who smelt it dealt it" Discuss.
Ans. The whole point about the bourgeoisie is that they, by definition, don't want absolute power. Thus epistemological suspicion- whether Marxist, Feminist or Green- gives itself away by pointing the
finger in that direction.
True, it was Socrates who set that particular bandwagon rolling. Jealousy of the great tragedians of the day is the commonly held motive and the irony delicious that he upstaged the luvvies by himself becoming the pharmakos (scape-goat ) required to purge the Polis of its ills.
Similarly, the Upanishads, the Bhakti movement, Sufism, and so on are themselves the fart that is Maya, Majaz, Illusion, what have you, rather than the fundament they are consecrated to lick.
Here is a sample of my model answer to the Epistemology & Metaphysics Paper (2007)
Q. "Who smelt it dealt it" Discuss.
Ans. The whole point about the bourgeoisie is that they, by definition, don't want absolute power. Thus epistemological suspicion- whether Marxist, Feminist or Green- gives itself away by pointing the
finger in that direction.
True, it was Socrates who set that particular bandwagon rolling. Jealousy of the great tragedians of the day is the commonly held motive and the irony delicious that he upstaged the luvvies by himself becoming the pharmakos (scape-goat ) required to purge the Polis of its ills.
Similarly, the Upanishads, the Bhakti movement, Sufism, and so on are themselves the fart that is Maya, Majaz, Illusion, what have you, rather than the fundament they are consecrated to lick.
That should suffice. After all this is just K.G.
Needless to say, my kunji was rejected by the publisher.
Apparently, I'd neglected to mention the celebrated connection between Alain Badiou and the Abahlali baseMjondolo slum-dwellers movement in South Africa.
Actually, thinking about it for a couple of minutes I've got to say- fair cop Guv.
Still, it's kind of upsetting to know I couldn't even get into the K.G class of my old alma mater.
Supreme Court should take action.
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