Weird: Seeing a Nihang Sikh in Singapore.
Truly Weird: Seeing an ethnic Chinese Nihang Sikh in Singapore.
There are no pictures, for the simple reason that it is not wise to take chances invading the privacy of a member of a martial race who is carrying a three foot long kirpan.
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Posted by Aadisht
I am off to Singapore for the next two weeks on *cough*a shareholder sponsored junket *cough cough* training.
During the course of training I will be staying at two five star hotels. It’s hard to pick the best thing about this sort of luxurious accommodation. There are two very strong contenders.
The first is the free breakfast. The idea of a breakfast buffet where I eat as much as I can before its time to head off to the seminar rooms is beguilingly attractive. When it’s being expensed to my cost code rather than to my salary account, it’s nirvanic. But it’s still not a clear winner.
Because there is the other, equally strong contender: free laundry.
Yes, free laundry. I am currently dumping all my clothes into my suitcase so that they can be washed and ironed by professional launderers (who, I just realised, will be Chinese, thus making this an even better deal). After six months of having my clothes washed by a maid who believes that the best way to deal with clothes is tough love, and who leaves the ironing to me, I will finally have an opportunity to have all my clothes stainfree, fluffy, sweet smelling, and crisply ironed. The mind reels in delight.
Right then. Time to get back to packing.
PS: Ritwik, you will have to wait a little longer for the Sohrabuddin and Idiotarians post. If I write a long post while in Singapore, it will imply a failure on my part to spend my free times out partying with an international contingent and Mr. Walker.
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Conversation with Pushy this weekend led to the two following significant discoveries:
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W-File almost completed. Regular blogging now resumes.
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Right people, I’m off on another one of my long blogging breaks. I’m busy with work, and I need to focus on writing a W-File. When I’m back, please hold me to writing posts on:
Until then, pip pip.
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Jaffna has a post on the Left and it’s role in Indian history education (link via Varnam).
This reminds me of my experience in Class 7, where we used the NCERT textbook on medieval India. History classes mostly consisted of reading the textbook aloud. So eventually we got to a point where my teacher was reading aloud about how the Islamic invasions of India had led to cultural interchange as India absorbed Turkish and Persian influences in architecture and culture.
So I lifted my hand and pointed out that interchange meant that the other culture also absorbed influences, so what did India contribute to Persia and Turkey? At which my history teacher looked flummoxed and gave a confused reply.
I was twelve years old, so I wasn’t really trying to put Hindutva fundaes in the classroom. And it doesn’t even prove that whoever was writing the textbook (I think it was Bipin Das) had an Islamic bias- just that he (or the NCERT editor) was sloppy with language.
Ahem. But there’s still a sin of omission we have to deal with.
Let’s accept the Leftist position that the Persian and Turkish invasions eventually led to a Muslim-Hindu composite culture. Yes, it may have come only after the invaders destroyed major existing cultural centres. and it may have been restricted to the nobility, but it was created and it was a good thing.
But if composite culture is such a good thing, why do the NCERT textbooks maintain such a deafening silence on composite culture created through peaceful processes?
From Class 6 to Class 10, the NCERT textbooks never mentioned the spread of a Buddhist-Hindu composite culture in South East Asia and Indochina through the Srivjayan Empire, driven more by traders and missionaries than by armies and navies. We get to know that there was a Roman trading outpost near Pondicherry, but we never learn that the outpost was there to trade spices, and the impact of the spice trade on the kingdoms of Kerala. Or about how Indian and Arabic shipbuilding techniques were exchanged across the Arabian sea along with Indian teakwood and how that contributed to the development of seafaring. And if I recall correctly, Bodhidharma’s journey to China, which is the origin of such rich seams of folklore, was never mentioned at all. I had to learn about all these things ten years later in quizzes and books (including this wonderful one by John Keay).
The Class VIII textbook (Modern India) was positively shy about the composite culture created by British colonisation (okay, to be fair, it was written by someone else). No mention of how Indian words swamped English, how Indian haircare and cuisine entered Great Britain, and on the long term cultural impacts of British technology transfers.
And in all this discussion, there’s no mention of composite culture in the current context- and how technology, trade and globalisation create new composite cultures faster than ever before – and do so without military campaigns or vandalising existing cultural structures. Nothing demonstrates that concept better, really, than the YouTube video below:
It’s almost as if our eminent historians prefer invasions and plunder to trade.
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Posted by Aadisht
The FGB writes about Dalit participation in the UP elections, and makes an excellent point:
There is nothing radical being said here. I am just advocating equality. The politicians and the armchair economists and political theorists on the other hand are always lobbying for equalisation.
But the most important paragraph is this one:
Instead we do not what is right, but what is easiest. Oppress them with state machinery, and then buy them out (if we allow them to vote) in return for IIM seats.
This is a massively important insight into how the Indian government works- not just in the realm of social justice, but in many others as well. I’ll make my own post on it sometime.
Meanwhile, read the whole thing.
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So what else do you do when there’s nobody around to fuck with your mind?
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Some people didn’t get the joke in the previous post. I was referring to the urban legend / FUD tactic that too much wanking will make you go blind.
It’s a myth, of course. But then so is the Mahabharatha.
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