Oh Academia!

My university is hosting a talk titled "

"Dominican Tolkiens: Diasporic Nerdiness And The Quest For The Divine"'

Oh the joys of arcane academia.

President Obama calls Senator Clinton

Benazir Bhutto (1953-2007)

Daughter of the West

Tariq Ali writes in the London Review of Books

"Arranged marriages can be a messy business. Designed principally as a means of accumulating wealth, circumventing undesirable flirtations or transcending clandestine love affairs, they often don’t work. Where both parties are known to loathe each other, only a rash parent, desensitised by the thought of short-term gain, will continue with the process knowing full well that it will end in misery and possibly violence. That this is equally true in political life became clear in the recent attempt by Washington to tie Benazir Bhutto to Pervez Musharraf."

Yet Another Blog

Now that I have turned 25, I can actually begin sentences with "When I was a young boy....". So my new blog "Nostalgic about the 90's" is where I am going to write about my memories of the public space in India between 1990-2000. Or in pop culture turns, what happened in India after Mahabharata ended and Kyunki Saans bhi Kabhi Bahu thi began.

Also, this blog should be back in action soon. I just saw Om Shanti Om and for some reason kept thinking about French poststructuralists.

President-General Pervez Lincoln

President Musharaff on why he proclaimed Emergency, blockaded the Supreme Court, suspended the Constitution, shut down all private media channels, and arrested half the sitting judges, lawyers and opposition politicians.

"I would, at this time, venture to read out an excerpt of President Abraham Lincoln, specially to all my listeners in United States. As an idealist, Abraham Lincoln had one consuming passion during that time of supreme crisis and that was to preserve the Union - because the Union was in danger. Towards that end, he broke laws, he violated the Constitution, he usurped arbitrary powers, he trampled individual liberties, his justification was necessity. Explaining his sweeping violations of Constitutional limits, he wrote in a letter in 1864, and I quote,

“My oath to preserve the constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensabale means, that government — that nation — of which that constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the constitution? By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the constitution, through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it.”

We are also learning democracy. We are going through a difficult stage. It is the nation which is important. And for me, for every Pakistani, Pakistan comes first. And everyone else’s consideration after that. I look at it from this point of view. So whatever I do, is for Pakistan. And whatever anyone else thinks, comes after Pakistan. With all my sincerity, whatever I am doing is in the interest of Pakistan. And therefore I am doing it with full conviction and my full heart and soul and mind in it.

Translation from Chapati Mystery



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CNN IBN Sinks to New Depths of Inanity

The quality of journalism and commentary on CNN IBN has been plunging to new lows every day. Several of the programs aim at involving the public in national debate. While conceptually this is a good idea, the questions they ask are incredibly inane.

For instance, when Pratibha Patil was nominated, they asked is India ready for a woman president? Apparently 95% of Indian's felt they weren't ready. The anchor was justifiably confused. Given that Indian voter's had no problems with women Prime Ministers, judges and Chief Ministers, all of whom wield greater power than the President, why would they object to a woman in a purely ceremonial post? Strangely enough it never struck them that the real question was whether the people were ready for Pratibha Patil as President.

Today's story was even more tortuous.The discussion centered around Pratibha Patil's remarks about the veil. The Question of the Day was whether the controversy over Pratibha Patil;s comments much ado about nothing?






The fact that the channel chose to devote almost 10 minutes prime news time to it kind of answers the questions they posed.

The panelists were a historian from Jaipur, a Maulana whose name the anchor had great trouble pronouncing and a journalist from the Pioneer. Vidya Shankar Aiyer cajoled all the panelists to agree that this was certainly something to discuss and these were remarks that she should not have made. If you think its dull so far it gets duller.

The historian very categorically stated that the purdah system in various forms existed before the coming of the Muslim sultans (not just the Mughals). In a previous interview, which was not aired in the show she had discussed how old Rajput forts had purdah quarters.

To counter this historian, who works on women in medieval Rajasthan, the anchor fished out a letter from a viewer (Anju Chandel from Noida???) who says "though it is true that the purdah system was prevalent before the Muslim invaders, it cannot be disputed wthat it was strictly enforced under the Mughal period. Umm, ok the next time we invite a nuclear scientist on the show to discuss India's missle ranges, the anchor can quote his milkman who disagrees!!!

I have no idea what the Pioneer columnist (Sandhya Jain's) position was. First, she argued that there is no need to go into history since Pratibha Patil made the remark today[????? ] She then said PP's remarks have to be judged depending on whether she spoke to Hindu women or Muslim women. The Pioneer columnist muttered darkly about an international conspiracy against the purdah, drawing in the fact that Shabana Azmi got a medal from the House of Commons and Salman Rushdie got knighted.

So is it ok to misquote history when we ask Hindu women to give up the purdah but wrong to do so when we speak to Muslim women?? Her position got murkier when later she decided to state that purdah was not a Hindu custom?? After all neither the Ramayana nor the Arthashastra mention it.

So she believed that the Muslims brought about purdah but Pratibha Patil should not say it publicly???

The Maulana didn't fare too badly (which is not saying much). This is quite possibly due to the fact that he didn't seem to follow the discussion at all and simply made a preprepared statement stating that the purdah was a cultural fact in South Asia and that the Presidential candidate should not have mentioned it. He had no problems if someone did not want to do purdah, but that women should not be compelled to give it up.

The final note of sanity was by Varsha Joshi, who said that while it is wrong to argue that purdah was a result of Mughal rule, PP was right in encouraging women to come out of the purdah. She placed this in context of the ghungat pratha in Rajasthan. Of course, assuming us simple minded viewers couldn't comprehend what she said, the news anchor decided to repeat all her statements prefacing them with "what you are saying is"

This is not a top quality news program. The discussions between the Indian Idol judges are more incisive and entertaining.