T.M Krishna & defunding Shastriya Sangeet

Many relationships are affectionate and respectful. Why? Human beings like affection and respect. Some relationships are not affectionate or respectful but may pretend to be for a reputational or credentialist reason.

The 'Guru-Shishya parampara' has to do with the Indian preceptor accepting the student into his household and teaching him as a father would a son. 

Since there is a reputational benefit in pretending to have love and affection for a father or other similar benefactor, it is usual in India for successful people to express affection and respect for their supposed mentors. If they said, 'my Guru was awful. He sodomised me all the time'- they may get sympathy but might be considered 'damaged goods' likely to burn out or have a melt down sometime soon.

Speaking generally, in Indian music, the student would be of the same caste, often a relative, of the Guru. Sometimes a person of superior caste and affluence would pay for instruction and, in a purely hypocritical manner, claim to show reverence to the preceptor so as to demonstrate a spiritual type of humility and largeness of heart.

Homosexual Gurus may have fucked penniless little boys- but they would have done so whether or not they were their students. Heterosexual Gurus may have had sex with those of their disciples who were comely professional courtesans- but this might count as on the job training. Sexual harassment, however, was not a feature of this tradition. Why? Because musicians were weak. If they misbehaved, Society would turn against them. Beating them might cause them to howl melodiously- and thus afford delight to the community. Thus, musicians tended to steer clear of sexual misconduct with respect to the respectable portion of society and adopted an obsequious mien. No doubt, having been buggered silly from an early age would be an advantage in inculcating habits of sycophancy and inoffensiveness. 

Writing for the Indian Express about pervasive sexual abuse and other such disgusting behavior within his own profession, T.M Krishna rapes common sense as part of his continuing campaign to indecently expose his own naked ignorance and stupidity so as to come across as 'woke' rather than a boring shithead whose own compositions are soporific. 

He writes-

The shocking allegations of sexual abuse and harassment against (late) Ramakant Gundecha and Akhilesh Gundecha have shaken the Hindustani music firmament.

Fuck off.  Nobody was shocked at all. The Gundechas, who were not 'khandani' blue bloods, did Dhrupad- a musical style so boring that only some equally boring, hippy dippy, Europeans bother with it. Such goras are constantly sexually propositioned because, back in the Sixties and Seventies- i.e. when the Gundeschas were growing up- drug addled, vacant eyed, prostitutes of this description were a common sight even in the smaller cities. Since they were very very cheap, they were constantly being badgered to give it up for free.

T.M, cretin that he is, immediately contradicts his assertion that 'the firmament had been shaken'. He admits that people would have thought it odd if female students of Dhrupad were not being harassed- at least by elderly crooners in mofussil towns. Elsewhere, hard eyed Ukrainian whores have raised the prestige of White prostitutes in India, just as Israeli drug dealers have raised the level of professionalism and sociopathy in the drug trade. Still, it is good to know that there are backward parts of the country where the grand tradition of molesting ugly White chicks is kept up. 

But truth be told, many have in private acknowledged that these stories are not exceptions. So many instances like this are spoken of only in whispered tones by people fearful that the well-oiled gossip network of Hindustani music will carry their words to the powerful within this close-knit community.

Gossip is generally whispered so as to add piquancy. If the gossip network is 'well-oiled' then everything within it would be 'common knowledge'- i.e. everyone within the network would know everyone knows that everyone knows etc.   

In 2018, when similar allegations were made about Carnatic musicians, all was quiet on the northern front.

But nobody gives a shit about Carnatic music. Only the Brahmin NRI market props it up. But that prop depends on the link between Spirituality, Music and Brahminical mores. Once TM succeeds in convincing everyone that the tradition is supported entirely by sodomy or other types of sexual or other exploitation, the art form will be reviled. It is one thing for some sweaty middle-aged man to caterwaul kirtans coz Krishna be so cool. It is another for him to do so in commemoration of the horrible wailing he first set up when inducted into the ranks of the catamite by his paedophile of a Guru. 

I recall my Mother losing her respect for Jeddu Krishnamurti when my Uncle explained to her that the fellow's imbecility arose not from the achievement of nirvikalpa samadhi but incessant buggery by Leadbetter. TM may kill off Carnatic Music in the same manner that the paedophiliac foundations of Krishnamurti's Messiahood killed off interest in Theosophy. 

TM was instructed in Carnatic not Hindustani music. He may succeed in convincing us that he was sexually abused by his Gurus because, after all, why would he lie about something like that? But we don't believe that robust North Indians would submit to sodomy as readily as TM- even at a tender age, when his morale had not been destroyed by training in a repugnant profession. 

The name of one Hindustani musician cropped up, only to disappear in a jiffy, and nothing more was said.

Gallantry is compatible with a romantic conception of Music. TM's genius is to suggest that Carnatic Music is produced by resentfully ageing catamites.

The world of Hindustani music — though to all appearances more modern compared to its southern cousin — is actually more deeply entrenched in the patriarchal and medieval mindset that besets both systems.

Did Europeans study either type of Music till the Sixties? No. Were middle class kids who were forced to study a bit of that shite sexually harassed? No. There may have been exceptions but then some kids got fucked by the chauffeur or the chowkidar. The truth is, Classical Music in India survives by giving 'tuition'. The matron who pays the poor Ustad or Pandit to teach her adolescent daughter will beat the fuck out of him if he tries to seduce her. Anyway, the sort of girls who study that shite are 'homely' to a fault. A big dowry has to be provided for anyone of her own caste to deflower her. 

The patriarchal, medieval, mindset was to treat Musicians on a par with prostitutes. It was to kill anyone who tried to get fresh with your daughters or sisters.  

At the heart of this rot is the worshipful regard in which the guru-shishya parampara is held.

No doubt, this cretin will say that rape is caused by worshipful regard of the lingam and the yoni. What the accusers of the Gundechas say is that some students kept quiet for fear of harming their careers- pathetic though those careers were. In other words, this is 'Me-too' of a type that occurs in low-paid Service employment. It has nothing to do with 'worshipful' spiritual or aesthetic traditions.  

Some senior Hindustani musicians literally walk around like they are avatars of some deity or the other!

Because they claim that 'Nada Brahma'- Music is a theophany. Their performances are equal to sublime sermons given by a Swamy. Sadly, Musicians have a long way to go to catch up with our delinquent Godmen in terms of rape and murder and enslaving the credulous.

The pedestal on which gurus are placed by Hindustani musicians is far higher than any seat given to their counterparts in Dakshin Bharat.

Nonsense! Both are considered merely a step above Mirasins. It is a different matter if they have made money and are of high lineage. Still, there is a large element of hypocrisy in any respect they are accorded. Moreover, journalists get away with being very rude to them whereas a Swamy's henchmen will beat the shit out of you if you insult their boss. 

Hindustani Music is actually quite good. But there is a serious over-supply of talent and so canny musicians give themselves airs and graces. But, cultivating spirituality and dialing down the pedophilia is the best bet long term. 

Equally, despite all the differences and petty politics between musicians, the “tradition” of watching each other’s back is far more prevalent in the Hindustani world. In fact, Carnatic musicians always talk enviously about how Hindustani musicians come together to put up a unified front when needed.

Shame the Carnatic singers can't put up a united front against this cretin. He is shitting where he eats and making the whole profession look bad. 

 TM has a gift for contradicting himself immediately. Thus he says-

In such a context, it has been heartening to see Hindustani musicians, old and young, come out and speak up against sexual harassment.

Only to add- 

Unsurprisingly, none of the superstars, such as Amjad Ali Khan, Hariprasad Chaurasia or Zakir Hussain, have thought it necessary to even make an obligatory comment.

Notice his use of the word obligatory. For him, it means optional.  

But what intrigues me is that many who condemn the sexual harassment simultaneously demand that the guru-shishya parampara be protected.

Why does this intrigue him? Presumably because he thinks 'Guru-shishya parampara' means 'fuck your students.' Would it surprise him to learn that this is not in fact the case? The Guru is supposed to be a father, a spiritual and moral preceptor, to his students. TM may say, 'but surely Daddy must fuck his Sonny boy? Isn't that Patriarchalism, and Medieval 'mindset'?

The answer is 'No. Patriarchy is not about fucking those who look upon you as a father. Medieval relationships were not about trading sex for career advancement. '

The question in my mind is: What are we saving?

Your face by not laughing in it. 

An inquiry into this question must necessarily be dispassionate, our mind shorn of all that we shared with our guru or gurus and all we treasure about them.

Did TM's Guru fuck him in the ass? If not, why pretend that the Guru-shishya parampara was about sexual harassment? The fact is, if you want your students to achieve excellence, it is probably not a good idea to fuck them. You will end up with syphilitic catamites not virtuosos. Those 'paramparas' which concentrated on fucking kids failed to perpetuate themselves in competition with others which were more abstemious in that regard.

A system cannot be evaluated based on personal experiences.

It must be evaluated according to outcomes. That's the market's job.  

What must be determined is whether the system — its core structure — is safe, respectful, and non-abusive of, students.

We know that one College Department, or Branch Office, can be unsafe and abusive, whereas another Department or Office, with the same 'core structure', is not. Thus, TM is talking nonsense.  

That is, irrespective of the nature of the guru, does the system provide security and strength and empower the student emotionally and psychologically to stand on her or his own?

We know that some people, irrespective of their upbringing or vocation, can't stand on their own while others with worse experiences can do so in an exemplary fashion. Gurus don't matter very much. Indians may pretend they do for Religious reasons. But then Indian Classical Music only enjoys a cachet for those same reasons. Otherwise, it is somewhat shite. The only subcontinental vocalist to have gone global was Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. He belonged to a family tradition, not a guru-shishya parampara. However there are other Qawwal troupes which are not family based. But then they aren't as boring as shit and, what's more, genuinely appeal to religious sentiments.

Once this question is asked, the answer is self-evident. Like most relationships, the guru-shishya relationship is grounded in a power imbalance, but here, crucially, the inequality is celebrated.

The Mummy-Baby and Deity-devotee traditions are grounded in power imbalance. Inequality of this sort is celebrated. We bow down before both Mummy and God with increasing fervor till the day we die. If we are academically very successful, we may show a similar adoration to our teachers- more particularly if we have students of our own. With spiritual instruction, this is more or less de reigueur. 

The need to be subservient to, indeed submit to, the master is an implicit necessity.

For TM. It seems, anyone who employed him, or who taught him, could have got a b.j off him because he is a submissive.  

Let me say it as it is: The parampara is thus structurally flawed.

Because submissives like TM will offer up their arsehole to any 'master'. However, this is a flaw in this asshole, not the nature of Human Society.  

No doubt there will be claims that I seek to destroy something ancient.

No. The claim is that this asshole is shitting where he eats. He is saying 'Gurus fuck shishyas. When you are going to a Classical concert you are hearing the wails of a catamite. Fuck that shite. Only listen to artists who went to a proper Music College or who got started imitating singers they heard on You Tube till they got so good that their own uploaded tracks went viral. '  

But a storied past must never be a defence against criticism.

Unless that is the u.s.p of your brand of shite in a crowded market.  

I seek not to destroy but to question.

But you are a cretin. Your questions destroy the mystique of your own stock in trade.  

It is not enough to punish abusers; an entire overhaul of how we teach these art forms is imperative.

Smartphone apps would do a better job than Gurus. But once you go down that Voice Training road why bother with boring and stupid artforms whose prestige derives from an ancient spiritual tradition which can only be transmitted in the one way TM says it ought not to be?

As Kalidasa said about poetry: “Not all poems are good because they are old. All poems are not bad because they are new. Good and wise people examine both and decide whether a poem is good or bad. Only a fool will be blindly led by what others say.”

This fool is quoting Kalidasa only because Kalidasa's poetry is very very old. This is a blind belief in the wisdom of the ancients. All old poems are good poems provided they have been transmitted continually. Why? Because they have accreted 'dhvani' resonances. All new poems are bad till their ancient dhvani is discerned. Only fools are guided by TM's quotations.  

The guru-shishya structure is inherently prone to abuse — of all sorts — yet, so often, the abuse is romanticised. When students are forced to commit to hours of household chores just to receive those few moments of wisdom, it is celebrated as sacrifice and commitment and endurance — “the guru testing the student”, we are told.

Back in the Seventies and Eighties, I heard this complaint from people doing PhDs in I.R etc at JNU. Now I hear it from the kids of my posh friends interning with 'PR Gurus' or 'Wealth Management mavens'. 

There is a wider problem of 'information asymmetry' and 'incomplete contracts' such that students committing to a long period of training can't be sure they won't be cheated. Mechanism Design can alleviate this problem. TM can't- because he is a cretin. 

The practice is then normalised when we say “it was all worth it”. All of us practising these art forms know of the psychological manipulation and emotional trauma that prevails, and all we have said is, “This is part of the learning process. You have to go through it”.

Maybe that is why TM is shite. The fact is abusive 'paramparas' will die out because the successors won't be able to go the distance. Their market share will decline. Incestuous families don't necessarily go extinct. But they do degenerate.

I am not judging musicians of the past by today’s ethical norms, but there is no reason to accept the standards of the past.

Unless you claim to be a Classical Indian Musician in which case you need to pretend that the standards of the past were higher and closer to God. Otherwise just weep copiously and warble- 'Guru fucked me when I was small. I fuck my students now I'm big and tall'- in Raag Neelambari, till everybody wakes up and goes home.

The least we can do today is to admit that “it was just wrong”.

Why stop there? Why not add 'Gurus smelled bad. They had horrible voices. Indian Vocal Music is ugly and cacophonous. That is why non-Indians run away from it- except for some dippy Europeans who learn Dhrupad and get pressed up against by greasy gundus. Let us make a solemn vow to stop singing this shit- even in the bathroom.'

Such an acknowledgement is a step forward. Even today, students and teachers see the service of the guru as a guru dakshina.

While gurus see it as hypocrisy or sycophancy.  

Service is a dangerous idea and often traverses many domains of abuse.

Gurus would prefer to be well paid and to be able to buy sexual services from those proficient in that field.  

It is also true that abuse increases exponentially when the student comes from an economically poor or socially marginalised community.

So, India is saddled with shite Music because it is so poor. If per capita Income increases, this horrible cacophony will be displaced by something more salubrious which does not involve fucking over ugly, stupid, very very poor, young people. 

It is possible to have a deeply involved relationship that is not toxic.

It is not possible to eat shit without getting a tummy upset. What TM has described is shit. Those who deal in it are diseased.  

But for this to happen, we need to reimagine our structures of learning.

Nonsense! Almost everybody reading TM's article has some learning which involved relationships which were not toxic. Thus everybody can imagine what should be avoided- e.g. forcing your students to suck you off- in order to prevent a teacher-student relationship from turning toxic. 

The system must begin with respect for students, and recognition of their independence and rights as individuals.

 Students should respect themselves. If they don't, even if they aren't sucking off teacher, they are sucking off the janitor or the dog or a part qualified Cost and Management Accountant who asked them for directions to the Post Office.

This is vital because the power structure is naturally tilted in favour of the guru.

Like the power structure between Mummy and Baby or Employer and Employee. 

But for this to happen, we need to first “humanise” gurus.

By shitting on them? Please say 'by shitting on them'!  

The parampara that demands obedience and unquestioning deference, only because someone is a guru, needs to be demolished.

This can be done cheaply by shitting on gurus.  

Simply put, gurus must be respected for being domain experts —

respect them as you would a toilet which is very very good at disposing of your feces 

nothing more. If the respect grows beyond this, it must come from a mutually evolving relationship.  

like when you carry around a potty and introduce it to your parents and take it to the Company Christmas Party as your date

A problematic area in Hindustani and Carnatic music is the informality in the learning.

It is difficult not to be all formal and buttoned up in your style of instruction if most of your teaching occurs while getting a rim job

And this extends to the institutions that musicians build. This informality is justified on the basis that it creates a unique, unconditioned space for learning.

not to mention carpet burns 

Informality can take so many forms, sometimes resulting in episodes of incredible learning, while on other occasions, there are just demands made by the guru because he is in a position to make them. Therefore, we have to be very careful while treading this territory. Am I advocating for the institutionalisation of these art forms? No, I am not. There is a lot to learn beyond the school-university-class framework, but such an arrangement cannot be an arbitrary, uncaring, student on-call system. I won’t go into the possible redressal mechanisms because they will remain ineffective until we lift the veil on the guru-shishya parampara and see it for what it is.

On the basis of TM's own testimony, we know what he thinks it isn't- viz. a relationship between a master of an essentially spiritual art and an acolyte who wishes to attain a similar stature. If Indian Classical Music isn't spiritual, then all that matters is whether we like it or not. Knowing that it is produced by sexually exploited pinheads may cause you to like it less. But the thing matters as little as what flavor crisps is your favorite.  

It must also be put on record that all we celebrate about the guru-shishya parampara — the intimate learning, sharing that goes beyond the syllabus — is far from unique to Indian culture. Or indeed even to music. In every sphere of activity, there have been and there are students and teachers who share a bond that goes beyond what the university demanded of them. And there are stories of great gurus and famous shishyas across disciplines and geographies. Learning is not time-bound or tied up in official seals. The little things that the teacher says during a walk or over a cup of tea could make a world of difference.

Sure. A really good tele-marketeer or cost and management accountant may have had a mentor of this sort. But we don't care. But 'apostolic succession' is important if it is a question not of a narrow type of virtuosity but something approaching theophany. TM doesn't get that if you secularize Indian Classical Music then it loses what little cachet it retains. Nobody believes anymore that singing a particular raag will cause rain to fall. In any case there are quicker and more effective ways of stimulating urination or going to sleep than hearing a particular Raag which causes you to wet yourself while sleeping through one of TM's Concerts. 

The problem with our concretised version is that this promise of magic is used as an excuse to normalise inequality.

Because the thing is a cult whose God is shit. 

In other fields, teachers and students have drifted apart, even vehemently disagreeing with one another, each finding their own areas of influence. But in the guru-shishya parampara of Indian “classical” music and dance, rarely can a shishya stand up against her or his guru and hope to survive another day. Therein lies the story.

No. The story is that Indian Classical Music is ab ovo spiritual and directly linked to Hindu soteriology and metaphysics in a complex manner. Gurus are devout and represent an Apostolic Succession. To have been trained in a tradition is to be able to reproduce it with fidelity. That is why the thing can flourish not just as performance but also as paideia. 

The story TM is telling is quite different. Indian Classical Music is a shitty little means to a shitty little livelihood. Those entering it are either very poor or have complex mental and psychological problems. The result is that they are bound to get shafted by sociopathic Gurus who originate amongst the dregs of Society. They are charlatans who pretended devotion to some paedophile so as to pass themselves off as masters of a complex Art form. 

TM says 'reimagining' Classical Music will help. But he has destroyed its image. Why reimagine the Child Brothel? Just ban the thing- or if that isn't legally possible then defund it. 

 

Prozarov & extemporizing the katechon

The advantage of believing that 'the end of the World is nigh' is that you may become more devout and nicer to other people. The problem with it is that you may do crazy shit like giving away all your money rather than paying your mortgage. If there is widespread belief that the world will end on a particular day, there is a danger that Society may break down altogether.

Thus St. Paul came up with the notion of the Katechon to restrain lawlessness.

Wikipedia says- The katechon (from Greek: τὸ κατέχον, "that which withholds", or ὁ κατέχων, "the one who withholds") is a biblical concept which has subsequently developed into a notion of political philosophy. 

The term is found in 2 Thessalonians 2:6–7 in an eschatological context: Christians must not behave as if the Day of the Lord would happen tomorrow, since the son of perdition (the Antichrist of 1 and 2 John) must be revealed before. St. Paul then adds that the revelation of the Antichrist is conditional upon the removal of "something/someone that restrains him" and prevents him being fully manifested. Verse 6 uses the neuter gender, τὸ κατέχον; and verse 7 the masculine, ὁ κατέχων.

Marxism has an eschatological aspect. There is supposed to be a 'final crisis' of Capitalism after which there is a Revolution and then a Dictatorship of the Proletariat and then the State withers away and then everything becomes really nice and each gives according to his ability and receives according to his need.

Marx saw his role as restraining workers and peasants from simply breaking machines, killing educated people, banning money and commodity markets and getting rid of Law Courts and Police Forces and Armies and so forth so as to revel in their own swinishness till they started to starve or the enemy invaded and enslaved the population. 

Thus Marxism is itself a Katechon. So is the Church- in the view of Doestoevsky's Grand Inquisitor. So is the hetairoi's Symposium, the hetaira's Salon, and every other such locus of unmanly, status seeking, poodle fakery.

Sadly, careerists sometimes, by mistake, reject a ladder for a snake. Carl Schmitt should have stuck with being a conservative Catholic jurist. Instead, he embraced Hitler. After the War, the silly man started babbling about the Katechon. Agamben and other such shitheads took up the cry.

A Finnish Professor- Sergei Prozorov- writes

One of the most important contemporary developments in continental political thought is its ‘messianic turn’, associated with the work of Jacques Derrida, Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Jean Luc Nancy and Slavoj Zizek. Despite their enormous differences, these and other participants in this discussion all share a sense of exigency about the advent of a radically different world: the world of democracy to come, the coming community, the politics of truth, a new ‘creation’ of the world or emancipatory ‘divine violence’. What constitutes these diverse orientations as messianic is less their relation to any historical tradition of messianism than this exigency that the potentiality of radical change be actualized. What this thought opposes is therefore not a purely secularist politics that would be wholly indifferent to the messianic, but another tradition, which is both aware and wary of the messianic event and seeks to delay its advent at all cost. Just as the contemporary messianic turn, which is strongly influenced by Pauline epistles, this tradition, which arguably continues to define the basic coordinates of Western politics, is also grounded in a particular interpretation of a (disputed) Pauline text, namely the passage in the Second Letter to the Thessalonians on the figure of the katechon.

There is a big difference between people who want the End of the World so as to get to Heaven- rather than have to wait in their coffins for the Resurrection- and those who pretend to want the end of Scarcity and the withering away of the State coz everybody enjoys working so as to provide for the needy who are unable to do anything for themselves. 

In Heaven, there is no work. Also, there is the satisfaction of knowing that however boring Paradise might be, still your enemies, those infidels or whited sepulchres or whatever- are being fucked up the ass but good with red hot pokers. 

Sadly, the 'world of democracy to come'- once the 'divine violence' is over- will feature no such compensating schadenfreude for its Stakhanovite longueurs.

Anyway, the vast mass of people, including young people since 1968 (when a hotter type of sex was on the cards), don't want that boring Terrestrial paradise where, you can bet your boots, porn will be banned and all the young people on Netflix series about Vampires or Werewolves will be differently abled, gender diverse, and look like shit. 

Thus, the only 'accelerationists' we have with us are nutjobs who dream of the final victory of violent Racist or Religion based States on the pattern of ISIS or Margaret Atwood's Gilead. Here, since the outcome of History is believed to be inevitable, the imposition of a horror is justified as just getting the thing over more quickly. Thus, if you believe in the 'technological singularity', you may as well start behaving like a robot because the robots are bound to take over. The reductio ad absurdum of the accelarationist creed is to just act like a corpse because, long term, as Keynes observed, we are all dead.

Scmitt's notion of the Katechon had little impact. By contrast, Vogelin's work was popularized by William Buckley and then appropriated in the late Sixties and Seventies by the Counter Culture. Thus, by the time I got to College 'immanentizing the eschaton' was associated with the Illuminatus books, not the thought-farts of Chairman Bill. Beginning one's career under Reagan and Thatcher showed that the katechon was better extemporized than the eschaton could ever be immanentized. For every Kalki on a White Horse, there was a Mahatma Gandhi running round like a headless chicken ensuring the White Man didn't relinquish his burden till it became unprofitable to shoulder it. But then India is very big. The Law of Large Numbers applies. Concurrency deadlocks and livelocks militate for a disaggregated Katechon. Perhaps a small, relatively isolated, country is more at risk from eschatological craziness.

It may be that Finland, a sparsely populated Lutheran country which must keep a wary eye on Russia, is threatened by nutters of a type the big democracies have little reason to fear. Perhaps this is why Prozorov writes-

 As this article shall demonstrate, the passage on the katechon in 2 Thessalonians 2 is  the most intensely political texts in the Western tradition and the conflict over its interpretation is similarly an intensely political struggle, at stake in which is the very existence of constituted power.

This is nonsense. Nobody ever gave a toss about the katechon. Homoousian may have mattered at the time of the split between the Greek and Latin Church. The doctrine of 'sola fide' was mentioned as the reason for the Lutheran split. But nobody has ever got worked up about 'katechon'. Schmitt mentioned it after the Nazis had lost. Shitheads like him were despised by all but a couple of stupid professors of shite subjects in the West. Vogelin and Buckley were repudiated by Johnson and Nixon. Since the Catholic Church didn't take up this nonsense, it had zero political significance. A couple of failed, but philosophical, Leftist Academics in Italy cornered this market but only after it became obvious that Berlusconi, not Bolshevism, would prevail in their dysfunctional Republic.

On the other hand, it is true that belief in the 'End of Days' may play some part in Right Wing American politics. Evangelical support for Israel is often mentioned in this connection. But this has nothing to do with any sort of Katechon. As for the Left- it is secular. It has no interest in the eschaton- save to fuel demands for a 'Green New Deal' before Global Warming gets out of hand. Wealth inequality matters to the Left. A Universal Basic Income may be a vote winner. David Icke seems to have enough fans to swell anti-lockdown protests whereas Agamben's followers were not visible at all. But nobody now thinks Jurisprudence of a theological type has anything to offer.  If Laws and Constitutions and juristic processes mattered so much, there could be no global E-commerce based on simple preference revelations mechanisms and quick, algorithmic, dispute resolution processes.  

Prozorov does not pretend that the katechon is important to Faith based political ideologies. 

Moreover, the significance of this text has little to do with a persistence of a vestige of the theological in modern politics. On the contrary, we shall argue that the logic of the katechon

which is about an occult force preventing the dead rising from their graves- i.e. is not logical at all

only fully comes into its own in the contemporary condition of biopolitical nihilism

by which is meant that we are not sacrificing our first born to Ba'al or offering Virgins to Hecate 

and any serious attempt to overcome this nihilism will therefore have to confront this logic.

Logic? This shit is logical? 

We shall begin by setting out two diametrically opposed approaches to the passage in a reading of Giorgio Agamben’s critique of Carl Schmitt’s interpretation of the katechon, demonstrating that this critique is not merely a matter of context-specific disagreement but rather exemplifies the fundamental division on the question of the political as such. In the following two sections we shall address the functioning of this concept in the contemporary context of biopolitics, devoid of the eschatological dimension. The reading of Paolo Virno’s attempt at a positive revaluation of the katechon in the context of the naturalistic philosophical anthropology and Roberto Esposito’s study of the immunitary orientation of modern politics will help us reconstruct the logic of the katechon in terms of the problem of the negation of negativity.

To whom is the negation of negativity a problem? No one with a univalent Type theory or a Ken Wilson type notion of a renormalization group. In other words, no one with a bit of Higher Maths in their degree since the Eighties doesn't know why 'negations of negations' are nonsense. The world is not dialectical. It features phase transitions of a universal, atemporal, sort.

Virno spent some time in jail for being associated with the Red Brigades. He renounced Marxian dialectics but to no good purpose. What prevailed in Europe- so long as the Ponzi scheme of Monetary integration continued to pay out- was Kojevian Euro-Bureaucracy as 'universality'. In America this type of stupidity reappeared as Straussian Neo- Conservatism but came a cropper in Iraq. 

Esposito had developed a 'bio-political' concept of 'immunity'. It was shite. The COVID crisis makes this apparent. 

Consider the following apercu of his on 'herd immunity'- 'It recalls Foucault’s concept of pastoral power insofar as the government functions as a shepherd for the population as a flock. 

The government functions as a government insofar as it is a government. It does not recall 'pastoral power' because saving the soul is not a function of government. Shepherds belong to a different species to sheep. The governed belong to the same species as governors. 

And yes, there is a quite clear difference between the policies of the Latin countries, like Spain, Italy, and France, which all went into lockdown, and some other countries.

No there isn't. Places which had soaring infection rates had draconian lockdowns. This was an idiographic matter. Political philosophy played no part.

Initially only Italy went into lockdown, but then the others followed quickly. 

Because there are Chinese manufacturing hubs in a very densely populated part of Italy. Furthermore, because of the presence of three generation households and other demographic factors, Italy had to be more cautious than Sweden.

On the other side of the debate, the United Kingdom, the United States and even some Northern European countries like Sweden initially tried to follow this path of herd immunity. 

Because of crap Scientific advise. According to a 'stress test' performed last year, the US and the UK were supposed to perform best under this scenario. But the CDC turned out to be shit. The NHS need not have been shit but, perhaps because of privatization of laboratory testing, turned out to be severely lacking in capacity. No doubt, a shambolic Cabinet played a part in the fiasco. On the other hand, one could always blame British 'yobbishness'. We are a nation of drunken football hooligans.

But this choice is, honestly, a form of eugenics, and in some ways even thanatopolitical, because it entails the deaths of a considerable number of people who would otherwise live. For herd immunity to develop, many of the weakest people are destined to die, as Boris Johnson also admitted.

Boris, like most of us, believed that if you go regularly to the pub and eat plenty of steak and kidney pie, then the Virus will back off from a confrontation. That is why BoJo went to gladhand the sick. Then he got the virus and almost died. The effect was salutary- but, sadly, not lasting. 

 He said that “many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time”.[2] However, these countries quickly changed course. The UK and the US also chose lockdowns eventually, albeit in different forms than what we have experienced in continental Europe. Let’s say that my assessment of herd immunity is a rather negative one: it acts as a form of autoimmune disease, that is, it tries to protect life through the death of a part of the population. The only non-negative population-wide form of immunity – i.e. one not based on the sacrifice of innocent victims – depends on the discovery of a vaccine. That is, if we ever get one. The lockdown strategy, on the other hand, has its own problems, by the way, and other risks linked to desocialization. The immunitary lockdown conflicts, beyond a certain level, both with individual freedom and with the exigencies of life as a community. So lockdowns are also risky immunitary dispositifs causing many problems we are only discovering since a few weeks. But, in my opinion, it is still preferable to herd immunity.

So Esposito isn't a moral imbecile. By contrast, Agamben said COVID was like the flu. The State was using the panic as an excuse to do something very sinister. 

In other words, Professors of Shite Subjects talked shite during this crisis. But such has always been the case. 

Prozorov's paper has been overtaken by events. We can now see, through the prism of reactions to COVID, that there was no 'logic' to this particular availability cascade. When it wasn't what Harry Frankfurt calls 'bullshit'- i.e. polemics unconcerned with truth- it was what the English call 'waffle'- i.e. it could as easily affirm or deny any proposition in the same sonorous terms.

In the fourth section we shall elaborate this logic in the analysis of Walter Benjamin’s theory of baroque sovereignty

which does not exist. He had a notion of tyrant and martyr as characterizing a particular genre of German baroque literature. But he was wrong. What was actually happening was the pushing forward of a notion of Germania whose seeds are in Tacitus. Neither tyrant not martyr could matter for the people of Arminius. Their katechon was racial- a compound of blood and soil- more especially as that soil yielded Krupps' steel.  

and demonstrate that pace Schmitt the katechon does not function as a link between the political and the eschatological,

The political exists with or without God. The End of Times requires His personal attention. Telling people they are crazy and restraining them if they get agitated is the only way to 'break the link' between nutters and politics. 

but rather exists only as the severance of this link, whereby nihilism, as it were, theologizes itself.

Nothing theologizes itself, though nutters may, quite inconsequentially, theologize nobodies.  

In the concluding section we shall return to Agamben’s messianic interpretation of 2 Thessalonians 2 and address the conditions for the fulfillment of the messianic exigency in the contemporary political terrain.

Agamben's messianism has revealed itself in all its glory- astride the donkey of COVID denial. The Church, thankfully, is keeping its distance. Meanwhile, Audrey Tan in Taiwan is using Maths and I.T skills to show the world the proper way forward. 'Test and Trace' pulverises facile notions of 'the herd'. There is a Ken Wilson type 'renormalization group' which can turn 'Biopolitics' into something useful and scientific rather than a paranoid cliche.  

Come to think of it, the Finns are plenty smart. Prozorov could get together with a couple of Mathsy types at his University and recast this woeful availability cascade into something useful and operationalizable. But that would win him no kudos in his own field of study. It would be career suicide. Still, one can only wish him well. 

Global Visionary Swami Agnivesh

 In return for 5,000 dollars you could have been designated as a 'World Ambassador' by the World Council and Parliament Association. For 10,000 dollars, payable by Bank draft to Swami Agnivesh or Dr. Glen T Martin, you could have been a Global Visionary. I don't know how much you would have had to pay for the title of Planetary Prophet but have decided to award myself that title.

Apparently, this WCPA- whose aim is a World Government- had some prominence way back when. Its heads met Zail Singh, Rajiv Gandhi and, best of all, Gaddaffi who hosted their jamboree in Tripoli. Sadly, this was before his corpse was sodomised. A Zombie Gaddaffi, angered at anal indignity, would have made their meeting newsworthy. 

I don't know whether Agnivesh made any money out of this scheme. I hope he did. Wealth abides when one's name is mud and ashes are all that is left of your body. 

Swami Agnivesh & the Saffron Hijra

In Greek theology a distinction is made between akreibia- a rigid legalistic approach- and economia- a suave discretionary method of management. In India, there is a distinction between satya- which is substantive but apophatic and thus non-homiletic- and artha- hermeneutics as an Economic, indeed Game theoretic, activity as essential as 'tamas'- sleep, instinctual drives- for Human flourishing. Akreibia is rejected because all Law is considered purely conventional 'samskar'. 

This three-fold division might appear to militate for a complete separation between 'satya' and the soteriology it motivates, and 'artha', the econo-political realm, whose operation improves, at least in material terms, the life of the instincts. However, precisely because Truth is apophatic whereas Compassion (karuna) militates for a suave economia, no such rigid division need actually obtain. The Buddha and Mahavira and the other great founders of Soteriological traditions, contributed greatly to improved 'economia' and thus a more comfortable 'tamas'. 

Sadly, in India, as power over shaping the economy slipped from Indian hands, Economia- except of a parochial type- ceased to be something with which Indian Divines could engage much with. There were exceptions. Swami Vivekananda comes immediately to mind. But he died young. What was lacking in independent India was Divines with an accurate 'Structural Causal Model' of the Economy. By the late Sixties, one saw learned Upadhyayas spout pseudo-Marxist crap. This didn't matter very much if they got on with their spiritual studies and spread, by the mere perfume of their presence, habits of thrift, courage in enterprise, and stamina in altruistic endeavors to their disciples. Still, it must be said, India seemed barren of an alethic theology with a sensible theory of Economics. 

Thus, there was a time when Swami Agnivesh- facile and self-contradictory though his oeuvre undoubtedly was- appeared to be the Hindu equivalent of the 'Liberation Theologians' who were in vogue in the Seventies and the Eighties. 

Then, quite suddenly, the Soviet Union collapsed. The Chinese Communist Party had already decided that 'to get rich was glorious'. What Marx actually said was 'to each according to his contribution'. The Poor, like the Stupid, we would always have with us. Create a Social Minimum by all means but don't give them another thought. The cult of what Swami Vivekananada had called 'Daridra Naryana' was one which perpetuated not Godliness but Poverty. Its votaries were virtue signalling imbeciles. Swami Agnivesh was one such. He even appeared on 'Big Boss'! The Arya Samaj was ashamed they had promoted that old fool.

Where did things go wrong for Agnivesh? He had risen rapidly in politics after becoming a Sadhu. For a Telugu Brahmin to become a Minister in Haryana is no small achievement. But the Haryanvis assumed he was bright and educated and that he'd use his knowledge of the Law and Commerce (he had been a lecturer) to some good purpose. Plenty of Sadhus turn out to be good administrators. Having the backing of the Arya Samaj should have enabled this supposed Man of God to have helped the highly pragmatic and productive people of Haryana to rise up. Sadly, Agnivesh wasn't really a Sadhu. He was a nautanki who wanted to create a tamasha. This he did by barging into some official banquet with a bunch of ragamuffins demanding they be fed! Clearly the man was suffering delusions of grandeur. Charisma is a gift. He didn't have it. But he was old enough to have found this out for himself. Not even a nautanki, he came across as an abusive hijra who had donned saffron robes rather than women's clothes.

Why did Agnivesh quit his Ministerial job and turn into a useless tosser? The answer is that he did not understand that India is very very poor. Making it richer is the only way to solve its problems. Sadly, by a paradox that Edwin Lim, of the World Bank, was to discover, setting up an NGO, perhaps grabbing a Jantar Mantar bungalow in the process, and gaining foreign backers so as to prevent Development paid better and garnered more fame than fixing India's ills. Agnivesh pretended that India was poor not because of low productivity but because some people were evil and others were too ignorant to see that this was so. To be fair, Agnivesh was only following in the footsteps of people like Mahatma Gandhi, Acharya Vinobha Bhave and Jayaprakash Narayan. In the latter two instances, the problem with 'Bhoodan'- (i.e. voluntary land redistribution)- was that there was no Institutional follow through. Agnivesh's campaigns against child and bonded labor, too, could have helped some poor people. But he wasn't interested in doing the boring Organizational work. The 'rescued', more often than not, had to return to the same sort of labor. Meanwhile, Agnivesh had moved on to some other cause. While people believed he was a big wheel in the Arya Samaj, they were prepared to buy into his hype. But his luck was running out. It turned out, he had no disciples- Satyarthi, his protege, who got a Nobel Prize, was accused by him of embezzlement- and his fellow Sadhus considered him a crackpot with only a superficial knowledge of Hinduism. 

This is not to say that ignorance of Hinduism is an obstacle to advancement as a Sadhu Mahatma. But one must have a solid base. Anna Hazare beat drunkards in his native village and thus secured such a base. He, not Agnivesh, presided over the big Gandhian movement- the Lok Pal agitation- of the last decade. Agnivesh was ignominiously booted out of that movement after he was caught on camera urging the Government to stand firm against 'Team Anna', whom he described as 'mad elephants'. 

No one knows what happened to the 'Ombudsman', or Lok Pal, demanded by Hazare. Like all the various other panaceas demanded by agitators, nothing changed when the laws were changed. Why? The British had left. Only they cared about their laws. 

The truth is Mahatma Gandhi had salience only while India was ruled by foreigners. Once the country became independent, Gandhi's financiers dealt directly with Ministers. Rather mysteriously, the Indian Government did little to prevent the Mahatma's assassination. Indeed, 3 autocrats with the same surname have, strange to say, been assassinated though protecting them would not have been difficult at all. It is not surprising that Rahul Gandhi has shown strategic brilliance in dodging the top job- or even the possibility of getting it. 

Agnivesh's problem was that he was protesting against the fact that India was India. Indians shouldn't be so goddamn poor, innit? Because of poverty, the great mass of its people aren't even holding M.B.A or PhD! We must protest against this! The problem with this type of activism is that people have come to see protests against the shittiness of India as one of the causes of Indian shittiness. Swamys and Sadhus are not the problem. Plenty of them are strict disciplinarians and enjoy locking up or 'encounter killing' gangsters. If they are less corrupt than dynasts, Governance could improve. But if they are self-publicists with a Messiah complex, then- like Mahatma Gandhi- they start repeating stupid lies with such vehemence that they end up working a great mischief. 

Teesta Setalvad, writing for the Indian Express, gives a sympathetic account of Agnivesh. But what she makes out to be his virtues were instead the causes of his downfall. 

Swami Agnivesh’s unique persona brought special meaning to the saffron robe.

The reverse is the case. The Arthashastra, written over 2000 years ago, says that a lot of people wearing saffron are rogues, spies, or charlatans. Agnivesh confirmed that view.  

Drawing deep spiritual and metaphysical strength from the faith of the Arya Samaj, a religion that was associated with power and hegemony and had no role in social transformation or justice was of no use to him.

Teesta means that the Arya Samaj was in the vanguard of Hindu revivalism. It welcomed converts to Islam or Christianity back into the Hindu fold. Agnivesh initially joined the Arya Samaj because he was worried about Christian proselytism. But the orthodoxy he found in Haryana was not to his more cosmopolitan Calcutta educated taste. Had he been a genuinely spiritual man he could have set up Orphanages and Schools financed by his devotees. Children rescued in the District would have been able to come up in such Institutions. But he wasn't genuinely spiritual. He was a political animal but without the charisma required to build up a cadre of dedicated disciples. Thus, all he could do was roam around seeking bandwagons to pile on to so as to add to his collection of press clippings. In the end, this hunger for celebrity led to his undoing. He suddenly popped up on Big Boss along with C listers like Shakti Kapoor. 

Teesta, disingenuously, asks- 

Through the 28 years of our association, what could have been the relationship between this Swami and a woman, an agnostic and her partner, Javed Anand the same?

The answer is a common hunger for publicity and money for their worthless NGOs.

This is probably best summed up in the tribute that he paid to our monthly magazine, Communalism Combat on its 10th anniversary in August 2003, a year after the Gujarat violence of 2002: “The passionate commitment that Communalism Combat exemplifies to disinfect the soul of India, countering the cancer of communalism with the antidote of trans-religious solidarity and uncompromising commitment to justice and equality, makes it the foremost bastion of inspired journalism in our times… this association is an engagement of true spirituality.”

True spirituality, it seems, consists in telling stupid lies about Modi. Common sense tells us that a sitting C.M does not want riots to occur on his watch. Yet these cretins made precisely this allegation and backed it up with lies. They were well rewarded for it but the problem with crying 'Wolf' is that people think you are an attention-seeking liar once the soi disant Wolf turns out to be a highly successful and respected two term Mayor of the Town.  

Swamiji’s journey into Indian public life is best remembered through the efforts of the Bandhua Mukti Morcha established in 1981 that culminated into the Bandhua Mukti Morcha vs Union of India judgment, the passing of the law to abolish child labour in India and further explorations in the courts on the deepening of constitutional rights of the most marginalised.

What was the outcome? Did child labor go down? No. Kids rescued by Agnivesh, Shekhar Gupta tells us, had to return to the carpet factories or else starve to death.  

This commitment never wavered and we saw him take this into the dark reaches of Chhattisgarh for peace talks with Maoists in 2010, where he was attacked by a Salwa Judum mob while on his way to provide relief to hapless villagers. The experience led him to file an affidavit in the Supreme Court, which had an impact on the judgment banning Salwa Judum a year later.

With the predictable result that the Maoist insurgency got worse.  

But for those of us battling the corrosive cancer of communalism,

i.e., Narendra Modi 

it was the Swamiji’s vision of Indian society and state as a multi-hued and diverse, based on an unflinching commitment to secularism and rationality that was so special.

Indeed. It was so special, that even Anglicized Indians started voting for Modi- or giving money to the BJP. In 2014, NaMo was the only candidate any party put forward for the top job. Rahul Gandhi funked it. Congress and the Left were decimated in succeeding elections. Why? They were so special they deserved special education. But their special needs could only be catered for by a wealthy country. If you can't change your Nation, change the Nation you belong to- or at least become openly Anti-National.  

He stood tall and proud in his Hinduism

telling everybody who cared to listen that Hinduism was shit 

at the Allahabad’s Kumbh Mela, opposite the stall of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) reclaiming a faith that he saw being both militarised and hegemonised.

i.e. he saw Hinduism was standing tall and proud and protested vainly against this outcome.  

He marched against the practice of Sati in Rajasthan

though it didn't exist 

and he argued with his counterparts from other faiths, questioning notions of “Hell” and “Damnation” and exclusive evangelisation.

Did he persuade anyone that he wasn't a shithead? No? Sad.  

His commitment to rationality within faith never wavered. “When the Kumbh fair takes place every year, many die in the stampede. People come to ‘wash their sins. I roam around the fair distributing pamphlets about how all this is a spectacle. How washing in dirty waters [of Ganges] won’t wash off one’s sins, but will cause disease!”

The problem here is that this fool wasn't a Doctor. He wasn't a Scientist. He was a Sadhu who had discovered that his Religion was crap. That's a good reason to stop being a Sadhu. Sins don't really exist in the way that germs do. The mental intention (sankalpa) to be purged of sin, however, is considered efficacious by every type of soteriology. No doubt, the details of how this should be done may differ. Agnivesh clearly believed that Hindu orthopraxy was useless. People should listen to his stupid shite instead. But nobody would do so. Why? He was now stupider and a more of a big fat loser than those of even humbler background and attainments that he met in remote places. Remember, compared to Modi, Agnivesh had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He had become a Minister in 1979. What had he achieved? Nothing at all- unless you count a three day run on Big Boss as compensating for being kicked out of Anna Hazare's Lok Pal agitation. 

We had many disagreements, including over the interpretations of revivalist and reformist strains within faiths, but on no issues of real consequence was Swamiji ever on the wrong side.

Because, for Teesta and Agnivesh, no issues of real consequence exist save those involving their own inflated egos.  

If there was one blip in this association, it was with events that led to some disillusionment and questions among other, fellow participants in a Peace Train from Delhi to Gujarat in 2002 weeks after the violence.

Agnivesh said Modi wasn't such a bad chap. He had gone 'off-script'. That was the blemish Teesta refers to.  

Most relationships endured, however, even as the Swami emerged, albeit with flaws. Who among us, however, can be blemish-less?

Both Teesta and Agnivesh were accused of stealing money from their NGOs.  Birds of a kind flock together. 

Swami Agnivesh’s was an unwavering rejection of an exclusivist Hinduism — as also any such competitive rendering of Islam or Christianity (younger activists could learn from reading his Keynote Address at the World Conference of Religions, a century after Swami Vivekanand’s historic speech). He berated himself and other religious persons from Abrahamic faiths: “As a religious person, I have no hesitation in recognising that religions have failed human beings.”

Religion, Agnivesh felt, had failed him. He joined the Arya Samaj and, lo and behold!, became a Legislator nine years later. Two years after that he was a Minister. This is a man who dreamed of becoming President of India! But he lost his footing. Decade after decade, his stock declined. Why? India was beginning to rise up economically. Yup, that's right, Neoliberalism was the Satan which dashed Agnivesh's dreams. Boo to Neoliberalism! 

In 1998, when the Kalyan Singh government was set to make Saraswati Vandana compulsory in UP’s schools, Agnivesh’s sharp detraction was unique. Praising what the Hindu goddess epitomised, he queried: “The wry humour of the situation becomes apparent when we recall that Saraswati is supposed to be the goddess of learning. UP is a state where illiteracy is endemic. Universal education for all children under 14 years of age, as mandated by the Constitution, has not been a priority with any of the successive governments this state has had since Independence… Could it be that the insult to the goddess of learning in keeping millions of people illiterate is sought to be compensated by forcing school children to do in ritual what the government won’t do in reality?… If we forfeit discernment at this juncture, Saraswati Vandana could well end up as a litany in the cult of political power…”

Either this man performed Saraswati Vandana or he didn't. If he did, why would he object to students learning to do the same? If he didn't, why not say so? It is reasonable to wish that something of no educational value to be omitted from Schools. It is not reasonable to wish to limit what is taught purely because some are too poor to receive that instruction. Notice that Agnivesh is imputing a vile motive- a wish to insult the Deity- to others without producing any evidence to justify the suspicion. Suppose he had said 'these people are only interested in Wealth which is the gift of Goddess Laxmi. That is why they want to insult Goddess Sarasvati' then there is some rhyme or reason to his allegation. But he supplied no such reasoning. He was merely insulting and disparaging people who were politically more successful than he himself had been.  

In 2006, when Kashi first, and thereafter Mumbai, our city, was ripped by bomb blasts and terror attacks, it was Agnivesh, Father Frazer Mascarenhas and Mufti Fuzail-ur-Rahman Hilal Usmani, who delivered sermons of wise caution instead of allowing us to collapse into an abyss driven by hate.

This will be news to people who lived there at the time. Still it is good to know that these men of different faiths didn't take turns forcibly sodomizing each other. Say what you like, sermons serve a good purpose if they can distract those who give them from mounting each other incessantly. 

No wonder, then, that it is the pallbearers of an exclusivist faith who – intolerant of a powerful symbol in saffron that spoke for a more eclectic Hinduism — who attacked him brutally in Jharkand in 2018 again, in an attempt at public humiliation, disrobing, even lynching.

Some ruffians beat up an old man. They weren't pallbearers, they were doing what ruffians do. No doubt, they got a thrill out of battering a guy who was once on Big Boss.  

He escaped narrowly but the damage done to an 80-year-old’s health was near-fatal.

Which is why I appeal to all my readers to mount each other incessantly rather than turn up at my door to thrash me. Being beaten is bad for one's health.  

Since 2014, he engaged publicly in a direct satire of obscurantist utterances from men in power, even those at the very top.

But it was he who turned into a laughing stock. The whole point of satire is to make people think your enemies are ridiculous. Like the gift of charisma, that of satire, was not given to this silly man.  

Videos of these speeches drew support in far-flung villages and towns.

Which is how come NaMo got elected.  

He can be seen in one expressing his utter disbelief at the Prime Minister’s contention that in ancient India, the Hindu deity, Ganesha, underwent plastic surgery and his head was replaced by an elephant’s. Or another, in which Agnivesh points out, “The PM said that the Kauravas (characters from a well-known Hindu epic, Mahabharata), multiplied themselves into hundreds. This, they achieved through stem-cell transplants”. Agnivesh laments: “Such lies, such pageantry, such superstitions, and India’s PM is perpetuating these! The country will move towards a deep abyss.”

But it didn't. Modi convinced the voters that he was himself an orthodox Hindu. Since Hindus are the overwhelming majority, Modi's party won power. By bad mouthing Hinduism, Agnivesh caused people to believe he was not a Hindu at all. He was merely a charlatan who had put on saffron robes for some egotistic end.  

The physical attacks did not stop after July 17, 2018. In August, a month later, he was again seriously attacked, even by a woman as he went to the BJP headquarters in Delhi to pay respects to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The last such attack was in Thiruvanthapuram October last year when RSS cadres attempted to manhandle him at a function which the governor was also slated to attend.

Agnivesh's luck had run out. People thought of him as a punching bag. God was merciful to him. He died. This is the utmost Divine Mercy shitheads can hope for. In my case, it may be less deserved. Yet I willingly stake my soul on that Grace no creature should be denied.  

For this saffron-robed modern-day Swami, the colour of the robes he proudly sported meant sacrifice, purity and commitment.

Commitment to what? The Truth. This is where the old egotist fell down.  

In a life well and fully lived – one that should be celebrated—he brought a renewed faith in the colour saffron.

Says a self-confessed agnostic. Agnivesh could have done useful work within the Arya Samaj. He may have been a good Head Master or Warden of a Hostel. At the very least, he could have been a good pracharak. But only if he had deepened his spiritual knowledge. A man must grow in his Faith and his Vocation. Agnivesh preferred cheap theatrics. His trajectory confirms the judgment Chanakya made millenia ago. Many in sheep's clothing are wolves. More particularly when they keep crying 'wolf!' and no wolf appears.  

Ruth's Veronica sore vext

For Thought is to Thank as Hunt is to Kill

& Song is to Sing as invoice or bill

 No balm but is Psalm hors-texte

& Ruth's Veronica sore vext.

No wine is tzu's flagon

Winds so follow the Tiger, every tear-duct dries

As Red Dust lays veils to your lovely eyes

& tho' Clouds follow the Dragon

No wine is Tzu's flagon. 

Envoi- 

Prince! The Mandate of Heaven is but an injured bird

Every chicken has heard, Love's mingyi Word.

Vilifying Varoufakis's 'Another Now'