Biswajit Ray & Tagore's beggar maid

Rabindranath Tagore's writing is world renowned throughout select parts of India for having the quality of being

1) as stupid as shit

2) as boring and stupid as shit

3) quintessentially Bengali- i.e. boring and stupid and utterly shit.

As a case in point consider the following tweet put out by the Embassy of India in Mali on 'Hindi day'.

This is a Hindi translation of an alleged line from Tagore meaning 'Indian languages are rivers and Hindi is 'mahanadi' (a small and unimportant river once known as 'the sorrow of Orissa' but which, after the building of a dam, is now quite well behaved.)

The humor here is that Bengali was once much superior to Hindi. Indeed, as one sailed down the Ganges from Hindi speaking areas towards Calcutta, it seemed that language and life became sweeter and more refined. One was advancing towards a more sophisticated technological civilization which was linked up with the wider, more glittering, world.

 Though we may now find it difficult to believe, the fact is, Tagore himself was considered a great poet. Alas, for my generation, Bengali was confirmed as a dialect of stupidity & Tagore the epitome of the vacuous bore. Thus it is entirely right and proper to attribute a sonorous but meaningless apopthegm to that daft beardie. To compare Hindi to a small and unimportant river in India is funny because there is a pun (mahanadi means 'great river') involved. It's like saying 'Women are flowers and among blossoms Kamala Harris is a cauliflower'. There is a pun here- Kamala means lotus- and, it may be, the intention is to say something nice and 'poetic' about her, but that is certainly not the overall effect. 

A Bengali Professor of Bangla, Biswajit Ray, writing in Print.in, suggests that something much more sinister is going on when meaningless shite of a sonorous type is attributed to a poet notorious for writing in that vein. 

As election looms in West Bengal, Rabindranath Tagore has been dragged out and dusted again by politicians. From BJP’s Narendra Modi and Amit Shah to TMC’s Mamata Banerjee, Tagore is being liberally invoked.

Tagore wasn't always a vacuous bore. He pointed out that Muslims in East Bengal would ethnically cleanse Hindus once the Brits left. Thus, for the bhadralok landed gentry, supporting 'Nationalism' involved cutting one's own collective throat. Tagore himself had a choice between sticking with being the hereditary Pope of a boring and vacuous Religion his grandad helped set up or else running a 'University for the Arts' which wasn't entirely crap- while he lived. After his death it was turned into a Central University and turned to shit. But this means Tagore is now the property of the Government. 

But intentional misinterpretation of the thoughts of great Indian thinkers for political benefit is quite a popular game in India today.

Tagore tried in a feeble manner to protest against the stupidity of the political class which was determined to cut the throats of the Hindu bhadralok- more particularly those with large estates in East Bengal. Then he simply gave up and hung out with little girls whose poetry was as vacuous and shite as his own 

This game has four common rules. Selection, decoration, and dissemination are the three pillars upon which the game-board is placed.

In which case it will topple over. When it comes to a vacuous bore, like Tagore, one can simply attribute any retarded shite to the cunt- which is what this Bangla Professor will himself do in this article. 

Without contextualising a text, a part of it is selected.

No. We have just seen that the Govt. of India, itself, simply fabricates meaningless shite and attributes it to Tagore or Gandhi or Deen-fucking-dayal Upadhyaya. 

Then that selected text is decorated with calligraphies and pictures. Once the digital or physical poster is ready, it is either posted on social media or published through other mediums. Sometimes it goes viral in a moment. People read and believe it. These three rules are at least grounded on a narrow premise. But the fourth rule of the game is the most heinous one. In our boyhood days, we often invented interesting quotes in the examination hall and passed them off in our answer-scripts as remarks of great historians so that examiners would give us more marks. We never thought that the high-school game would one day also become part of ‘WhatsApp University’ and political propaganda.

The Indian education system- as repurposed by the U.P.S.C- proactively repurposed quotations from dead White males into pearls of wisdom from dead brown eunuchs of either sex. Thus, 'that Government is best which governs least'  and 'Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely' are both canonically Gandhian whereas 'Suck my dick, and make it quick' is a mahavakya of Mother Theresa. 

I can still remember that afternoon. A journalist friend rang me up. “Did Rabindranath say Indian languages are rivers and Hindi the Mahanadi? This quotation has been circulated on the notice-board of a reputed university in the name of Tagore without specifying the source,” he said. I was taken aback and searched the writings of Tagore thoroughly, but could not find it. Rabindranath never undermined the importance of Hindi as an Indian language. Hindi-Bhavana was established in his academic institution, Visva Bharati, in 1938, for cultivating the language and literature. But that does not mean the poet believed in language hierarchy. The ‘Hindi Mahanadi’ quotation is fabricated in the name of Tagore to justify the superior position of one of the many Indian languages.

Actually, the mahanadi- as this guy well knows- is a small and unimportant river. Tagore was capable of irony and sarcasm and so forth. In his own time, the mahanadi was only in the news when it flooded and thousands of very poor peopl in Orissa died horribly.  

And as the election campaigns heat up, and the BJP tries to claim Tagore, we must put everything distilled to us in his name through a litmus test.

Why? The man was a vacuous bore. In his own translation of his work he speaks of a beggar girl pulling her skirt over her head. He seems to have been unaware that a woman who exposes her vagina is not a beggar. She is either a prostitute or a lunatic. A beggar may pull her ragged shawl over her head. She won't pull up her skirt to hide her face so that everybody can get an eyeful of her vulva. 

There is no point applying a litmus test to a man who wrote like shit because he had more beard than brain. 

Although it is difficult to stop this game of selectively quoting or misquoting, we can arrange a litmus test for those fabricated quotations.

No we can't. We can either say they are fabricated or declare their provenance.  

First, we must politely ask the quotation-makers to provide the source or the name of the text from which the lines are taken.

Professorji, there is a beggar girl quoting Tagore and lifting her skirt to hide her face. Kindly go and very politely ask her to provide the name of the text from which the lines are taken. She may try to drown you in her pussy juices. But you just go ahead and apply litmus test while holding your breath. Your wife will praise your diligence in this matter. She won't beat you with her chappal. 

Second, we should date the text, if possible, and compare it with other writings of that thinker to contextualise it.

Very true! Take this quotation from Tagore's prize winning Gitanjali-  

The morning time is past, and the noon. In the shade of evening my eyes are drowsy with sleep. Men going home glance at me and smile and fill me with shame. I sit like a beggar maid, drawing my skirt over my face, and when they ask me, what it is I want, I drop my eyes and answer them not.

What is the context of men smiling and asking a girl what she wants when the fact is she has drawn her skirt over her face and isn't saying anything at all? The answer is, the context is a very low or demented type of prostitute who is exposing her money maker because she has no other charms. 

Niradh Chaudhri has described Tagore, shamelessly begging for his Shantinketan, as a wealthy and cultured Swann reduced to the status of a rent-boy so as to shower wealth on a vulgar Odette who turns into a meretricious Central University now notorious for being littered with beer bottles and used condoms. 

No doubt, there is a Vaishnava sub-text to Tagore's witless shite but there was a long tradition of prostitution associated with this type of lyricism.

For example, if we read Tagore’s writings in chronological order, we will find that he

grew stupider and stupider because the Hindu bhadralok were getting stupider and stupider and ended up clamoring for their collective throats to be cut

opposes the centrality of any particular language, religion, icon and nation over others.

This was certainly the reason his grandfather spent a lot of money lobbying the British to send more Whites and expand their control over India. Tagore and Roy explicitly said that this was necessary to safeguard the Hindu from the rapacious Muslim. The ending of 'Home and the World' couldn't be more clear or more prophetic. The Hindus must either flee or get killed by the Muslims unless the Brits remain in charge. What Tagore could not have guessed was that once the Brits surrendered control over Food to the Provinces then democratically elected Governments in Bengal would preside over a terrible Famine. Indeed, the thing happened again once Bangladesh became democratic. Without the Brits, Bengal had both famines and pogroms- thanks to Democracy.  

In his writings on ‘History of India’, he underlines that in our society, differences are natural

which is why beggar maids draw their skirts over their face. Suppose they had dicks not vaginas, then this would not be a good tactic to drum up business. Thus differences are not just natural- they are conducive to a type of commerce which does not require much in the way of brains.  

but the differences are neither erased in the name of artificial oneness nor do they block the spirit of amity.

How come the Hindu population of East Bengal has fallen decade after decade? 

Tagore proposes a ‘Ramrajya’ where each one can believe in his or her own Rama instead of an iconic super hero.

Very good of him I'm sure. Hindus killed or chased out of East Bengal must have had a swell time believing their Ram was Spider Man or Wonder Woman or the Incredible Sulk.  

Rabindranath in his poem ‘Bhasa O Chanda’(Language and Metre) describes a meeting between Narada, the great devotee of Vishnu, and Valmiki, the ancient poet, at a topavana on the bank of river Tamasa. During their talks, Valmiki hesitantly asks Narada, “How can I write the life story of Rama? I am afraid of deviating from the truth.” Narada calmly replies, “Whatever you write is true. / Happenings are not always true. / O Poet, your heart is more reliable than the birthplace of Rama.”

Tagore's daddy was the head of a Brahmo sect which spent a lot of time shitting on orthodox Hinduism. To his credit, Tagore was conciliatory. Still the fact remains that his oeuvre addresses a theological controversy which everybody now finds meaningless. The fact is Tagore did not concentrate on spreading Brahmoism as its Maharishi. Suppose he had done so, then his descendants would have palatial mansion in New York and Paris and big Temples all over the place. They might even have high quality Medical Colleges and Hospitals and so forth. At the least, they could be like the Ba'hai Movement. Tagore made a mistake by going for culture not religion even though he had already invested in a beard and a kaftan and a line in vacuous chat.  

Tagore, a believer in liberty of expression, stands for poetic imagination.

If poetic imagination stands for vacuous shite.  

He knew that India is a land of varied Ramayanas.

But, more importantly, parts of it could turn into places where those who revere the Ramayana are killed, robbed, or chased away. Indeed, the thing would happen to those who didn't revere shit but who were still classed as Hindu. 

In this land of diversity, Valmiki can imagine his own Rama.

It may be news to this writer but imagination allows anybody to imagine anything in any sort of land. India wasn't a 'land of diversity'. It was a starving shithole unable to feed or protect or rule itself. Still, the Tagores had done well. It was in their interest for the Brits to stay. Sadly, the Tagores no longer possessed any useful talent which they could successfully deploy in prolonging the Empire. Gandhi, it is true, managed to postpone Independence by fifteen or twenty years. Tagore could do nothing but run around like a headless chicken begging for money for his Shantiniketan.  

But the realpolitik of Hindutva does not believe in many Ramayanas.

Sure it does. Hindutva doesn't give a crap about the canonicity of the Uttara Kanda. All it wants is to eliminate caste so that the Nation can pursue sensible economic and defense policies.  

The Ramjanmabhoomi project certainly goes against what Tagore’s Narada had to say.

So what? Tagore's Narada is not part of the Hindu Religion. Recall, the Brahmos fought Court Cases to be declared a completely separate Religion. Later, some 'inter-caste' marriages were legalized by a false claim on both contracting parties to be Brahmos. 

However, the number of Brahmos has now greatly declined. In 2001, only 170 people declared themselves to be Brahmos. They are welcome to keep Tagore's Narada to themselves. If they die of grief because the Supreme Court Mandated Ram Temple comes up who will notice?  

Instead of keeping one’s Rama to one’s heart, the soldiers of Hindutva want to crown their political fetish on a particular geographical ground by erecting a huge temple. Setting up an immense statue or temple generally satisfies the ego of its founder or builder.

What satisfies the ego of this shitty little Professor of Bangla? Is it impotent railing against the ideology which is challenging the thugocracy of Mamta Di?  

Rabindranath Tagore categorically criticises the futile egomania of politicians and kings in his writings.

But his criticisms had no effect whatsoever. His mania in this respect was utterly futile.   

Organised religion and state-owned technology provide power-mongers with tools to nurture their pride.

So Tagore's daddy and grand-daddy- who 'organized religion' and depended on the 'state-owned' technology of the Raj for their wealth- were 'power mongers' interested in 'nurturing their pride'. But, in that case, so was Tagore. 

Our Bangla Professor probably teaches at a State owned University. This nurtures his pride. Shame on him!

He retells the story of a sage named Narottom who sits under a tree outside a golden temple.

Does this Bangla Professor sit under a tree outside the University campus? Does he refuse to accept a salary?  

A curious king comes to him and says, “Look, My Lord, I have built this skyscraper. But instead of going to the shining shrine, why are you singing the name of God under this tree?” Narottom replies, “God is not in the temple. Without giving support to the poor and fire-devastated subjects, you have used the money to construct this structure not for worshipping God but for embellishing your own pride.”

Professors enter the big shiny (relatively speaking) Universities to teach worthless subjects even though they know this hurts the poor. Look at Amartya Sen presiding over the white elephant Nalanda International University! Just these wankers are embellishing their pride all the time I yam telling you! They should go sit under tree like Narottam. Hopefully, coconut will fall on their head and crack it open.  

This candid comment makes the king furious and he labels the sage an ‘agnostic’. Nowadays, liberals are called ‘anti-national’. Bhakta Narottom hardly pays any attention to this comment.

So what? He didn't achieve anything. Sitting under a tree is one way to pass the time. So is shitting under a tree. We must encourage Professors of Bangla to go find a tree under which they can perform these two activities.  

In Tagore’s drama ‘Waterfall’, an engineer embanks a muktadhara (free river current) to control a kingdom’s water resource and stop it from reaching the colonies.

Around this time, people like M. Visveswararya were showing how building dams could save thousands of lives while providing secure livelihoods and generating electricity and so forth. There were devastating floods on the mahanadi in 1936. Independent India constructed the Hirakud dam. Most people think this a good thing. This stupid Bangla Professor, who really ought to be sitting or shitting under a tree, thinks it was a very bad thing. Pride was embellished! That is very wrong! Everybody should be constantly humiliated. Then they should draw their skirt over their face like a beggar maid so as to reveal a nice vulva rather a dick which might embellish their pride. 

The king wants to tax the people for water, and so the barrage is raised. One of Tagore’s finest plays, ‘Waterfall’ ends on a rebellious note. The heir to the king’s throne, Abhijit, demolishes the dam and right to equality is reinstated in the land.

And then there are floods and epidemics and some more virile bunch of thugs takes over the territory and Abhijit's sons are turned into catamites while his daughters constantly draw their skirt over their face like beggar maids because Tagore thought that was a swell way to pass the time.  

Muktadhara was written after the First World War.

Which showed that the age of Kings and Emperors was over. 

Tagore had experienced the narrowness of jingoism

People in Britain had told him he was a smelly nigger. Max Beerbohm- not exactly a racist hooligan- wrote a poem about Tagore which made the point that Tagore was a darkie. Darkies smell. They should use carbolic soap.  

and described vividly the modalities of State power in his next play Raktakarabi.

Tagore's ancestors had an intimate knowledge of modalities of State power. But Tagore showed no awareness of this whatsoever. He wrote shite at a time when Fritz Lang and Berthold Brecht were writing similar, but much much better, shite. 

It tells the story of a city named Yakshapuri that flourishes around a gold mine. Farmers are enticed to be miners. They enter the city to test their fate and eventually are controlled by the central power. In that city, armoury, temple and wine shop stand side by side to lure the people into fantasies. Nandini and Ranjan happen to come to Yakshapuri, and they inspire the miners to revolt against the capitalist system. At the end of the play, the king comes out of his hiding place, and, as his mind undergoes a change, joins the rebels to change the system to benefit the farmers.

Compare this shite to Lang's Metropolis or Chaplin's Modern Times and you can see why Bengal was bound to decline. 

One can give many more examples from the texts of Tagore where the centralisation of power is criticised.

The Tagores rose because they supported the centralization of power by the Brits. Once power was ceded to elected Governments in the Provinces, Bengal suffered both famine and pogroms and ethnic cleansing. The economic basis of Tagore's class was wiped out. 

Still, as a guy trying to raise funds for an Arts College, the guy had to put on the sort of shite plays which appealed to donors. Marwaris and Seths were financing Gandhi. Tagore too got some crumbs for getting with their program. 

And those who are quoting Tagore today would do well to read his poetry, plays and stories first.

Fuck off! Reading Tagore makes one want to draw one's skirt over one's face while shitting and sitting under a tree.  

He was not a man who could be put in a box and branded

Bearded Bengali retard is the box and brand of this bard.

— that’s what he fought all his life.

using his man-pussy? Is that why nobody noticed?  

He fought nationalism, organised religion, and the centralisation of power.

Fought? If what Tagore was doing was fighting, fuck would surrendering involve?  

I am also quite sure that the writings of Bankim Chandra, Vivekananda, and Subhas Chandra Bose will also be used systematically to violate the spirit of plurality of our land.

No. If past history is any guide, once the Muslims take over, they will quote Muslim authors not Hindus. I may be wrong. Perhaps, Owaisi will take to Bankim and start reciting Vande Mataram all over the place. 

These Bengali thinkers had their own views and philosophy, but none of them opposed or suppressed the cultural and political diversity of India.

Bose actually ran off to Germany to get cozy with Hitler. Then he joined hands with the Japs to invade India. 

It is a fact that Fascists gain power by beating Commies in the street. Who in India has gained power in that way? Only Mamta. This Bangla Professor may like her brand of Fascism. She is after all a great writer and artist- just like Tagore. If Mamta continues to rule Bengal, the day will come when this 'Associate Professor' of Bangla will have to give lectures on the sublime literary compositions of Didi. 

Till then he can pretend to be a chemist-

So, our litmus test becomes even more necessary in this new ‘Ramrajya’.

The law is itself the litmus test of Religion. Tagore wasn't a Hindu. He was a Brahmo- a sect which has almost completely disappeared. 

Modi now has a better beard than Tagore. I suppose, because he is associated with the Ram Temple, he could be seen as having instituted Ram Rajya.

 It seems, like Tagore's shrewd beggar maid, drawing her skirt over her face, this Professor at a Central University is actually panting for Modi while appearing to truckle to Mamta. 

Why the idea of Justice must be transcendental and Institutional

 What does it mean to say 'I want Justice?' Surely, the idea I am seeking to convey is that I have suffered a wrong and am seeking redressal. What type of wrong? Surely it is one that everybody would agree was an undeserved injury or deprivation. Suppose it turns out that I want to cut off the head of some innocent guy just because I think it may help me relax. Then people are likely to say 'you want to satisfy your blood lust. You don't want justice.' It may be that after I cut off the head of some poor sap, it is discovered that he was a terrorist intent on mass murder. My action may be praised as promoting the ends of Justice. But, the fact remains, I did not want Justice. I wanted to give vent to blood lust. 

On the other hand, a person who says 'I want Justice' and points to the man who unjustly killed her son may set off a chain of events which ends with the guy being hanged by the neck till he is dead. We would say 'that woman gained justice'. We would not say 'that woman gained vengeance'. 

Justice, as an idea, has what Kant would call a transcendental element- i.e. one which is independent of empirical evidence or sense impressions but which arises in an a priori manner and which may be one everybody, after proper reflection, will agree as itself just, fair and prescriptive. It doesn't matter whether or not everybody does in fact agree to this. All that matters is that the idea have this transcendental aspect. If it doesn't, then when one speak of Justice one is simply expressing one's preferences. Thus I might say 'I'm cold. How unjust! How unfair! Why should some people feel warm while I, who am too lazy to turn up the thermostat, am feeling distinctly chilly?' In this instance, no idea about Justice or Fairness has been advanced. I have used the word 'unjust' to mean 'I don't like this'. If I turn up the thermostat to get warm, I have acted in a self-regarding manner. We don't feel that Justice has been advanced. More generally, any piece-meal action focused on the realization of a desired state- e.g. subsidizing fuel so more people can afford to turn up the thermostat- may be characterized as just by those who benefit or unjust by those who have to pay for it but no 'idea of justice' is implicated in it precisely because the thing is piece-meal and 'realization focused'. Thus, it is merely part and parcel of local politics. It is mere puffery to describe the thing as part of a crusade for Justice of some type. 

What happens when we use a word like 'Justice' without having any 'transcendental' idea- unconnected with the here and now- in mind? Then, the suspicion arises that people who say 'this is unjust' are motivated by self-interest or personal prejudice or are virtue signaling simply. They are canvassing support for a selfish or egotistical reason. They are not votaries of justice at all. Let them pay for assistance and, if it pleases them to do so, prose on about Justice to their heart's content. 

Institutions are ways to give concrete form to ideas that people may find useful. If an idea corresponds to a 'concrete universal'- i.e. has a transcendental aspect- then it can be institutionalized. Appealing to that idea is to appeal to something inter-subjective and potentially impartial. Justice must be something institutionalizable otherwise it is merely a matter of personal preference or 'Thymos'.

An Institution differs from an Enterprise in that its motivation is explicitly 'transcendental'- i.e. a priori and abstract and concerned with an ideal- even if there is an implicit awareness that such is not genuinely the case. Though ideals may be pursued by amateurs- e.g Batman battling the Penguin- professionalism requires some Institutional trappings if only for advertising purposes. 

Thus Schools are set up to spread Knowledge- not make a little money for otherwise unemployable teachers. Laboratories are set up to advance Scientific Research- not serve as a front for the production of crystal meth. Courts are set up to administer Justice- not serve as a means to harass your enemies with bogus law suits. Armies are created to defend the country- not take it over and run it into the ground as happens in Pakistan. 

In each case it is useful to have a transcendental idea of the thing which the Institution is supposed to foster. That idea may be jejune. It may be 'cheap talk'. But if it is useful, then that is what will happen. The satirist may say 'Schools foster ignorance! The Army institutionalizes cowardice! The Courts are the mothers of Crime!' but we still need to pretend that this is not their true purpose. Thus Institutions should be reformed- or at least the attempt should be made- even if there is little empirical evidence that things really will improve. In the same way that we can't reach the stars yet may usefully plot our course by observing them, so too can we profit by ideals which remain unattainable. 

Amartya Sen, with typical Bengali wit, takes a more cynical view. He says having an ideal of justice is useless. It makes no difference to the real world. But this is also true of criticizing ideals of justice. If the one is redundant so is the other. The problem is that some people have charisma. If they also have an ideal of justice which the can articulate then real world change can and does occur. Sometimes Institutions are founded which drive rapid socio-economic growth such that the 'real world' is completely transformed. What's more, here and now, we find that people with a belief in ideal justice can do very well for themselves and for Society precisely because they articulate 'endoxa' re. the ideal of justice. Thus, on purely empirical or consequentialist grounds, we must accept the utility of 'transcendental institutionalism' because the fact is Judges are respected and well remunerated and countries which have sound Judicial institutions seem better able to deliver prosperity and security to their citizens. By contrast, denying there is any worthwhile ideal of justice is foolish. If you say 'let us do x to make things less unjust', the answer comes back 'why start with x? Why not start with your chopping your own head off and shoving it up your arse so as to correct a manifest injustice perpetrated by Mother Nature?' By contrast, if you stick to describing an ideal justice system you may persuade people to bring about reforms such that the problem of x is properly tackled alongside other injustices you may not be aware of. When we speak of ideal situations we elide 'concurrency' problems. We side step problems of computability and complexity. Furthermore, because the way in which Society embodies ideals is through Institution building or reform, we are not tackling one problem in isolation but preparing Society to deal with vast classes of comparable problems. In the case of Justice, it is obvious that 'stare decisis' has a multiplier effect. One decision in one case covers a whole range of similar cases. This changes Aumann 'public signals' thus promoting better correlated equilibria while also reducing Uncertainty. 

Sen has a second argument against 'transcendental institutionalism'- viz any such conception can be 'reasonably rejected'. But, for coordination games, it does not matter if people 'reasonably reject' Schelling focal points. They soon find out that this is a foolish thing to do. Why? If the other kids meet up at Burger King after class but you go to McD because you have scientific proof that their milkshakes are better then...you come across as a johnny-no-mates. Sad. 

Sen's third argument is equally foolish. He thinks we need a broader theory. But nothing is stopping him having any sort of theory. He is welcome to say mean things about 'transcendental institutionalism'. But since he can't point to anything superior anywhere in the world all he achieves is demonstrating that the guys he attacks- who weren't Jurists at all but were Professors of shite subjects- were as shite as himself. In other words, his philosophical achievement is to say philosophers are shite just as his achievement in Econ is to say Economists are stupid and evil. One reason Sen may be right, at least with respect to himself, is because the Academy, as an Institution, has decided to give up on anything transcendental in order to focus on the realization that it is a Ponzi scheme.

Or Christ all Chorismos

What is Love save the Heart's unsubornable subject? 

What is Beauty but Art's impossible object?

Or Christ is Chorismos, or our Selves the gap

In the cage of my ribs, why lay a trap? 

Did Schwarzenegger just terminate Trump?

No. Don't be silly. Schwarzenegger's excellent speech has ended one phase of Trump's career- which was ending anyway. But Trump was only using the White House as a stepping stone to what he really wanted- a career in professional wrestling. 

This is what Arnie is hinting at. He will play Conan the Barbarian taking on Trump- who will be like this bad-ass red-head with a Russian accent decked out in sables and stiletto heels. Nothing else will make America Great Again. 

Maneka, Priyanka & pratiloma Shakti

A tape recording, purportedly of Maneka Gandhi abusing a 'Ramalingam' (which means 'Sign of Lord Ram') who dared defend his family against a dog, has recently surfaced. I am aware that Priyanka Gandhi too is reported as speaking in this vile and bullying manner- but is only to local people in the family fiefdom. 

I note, without further comment, that Maneka's father killed himself whereas it was merely Priyanka's father-in-law and brother-in-law, not any blood relative, who committed suicide. Still, both clearly have 'Shakti'. Sadly, it appears to be of a 'pratiloma'- inauspicious- kind. 

Indira Gandhi was well served by Kaula Kashmiri Foreign Service officers. The role of P.N Haksar has been much memorialized. That of M.K Rasgotra, less so. Why? There was an occult dimension, concerning 'things hidden from the beginning of the World', to Indira's last years. I was just old enough to overhear things which my lecturers at the LSE could shed little light on. But, precisely because I did not listen, that 'unthought known' remains legible to me.

To fully savour the irony of the Dynasty, so protractedly, dying nasty one must look at the role of Maneka Gandhi. Her entry into the family upset the astral dynamics- according to the 'traditionalist' view. Maneka's father killed himself, for her sins, her son will do the same. This is her 'prarabdha' karma as a 'pratiloma' shakti.

Her fate- one we can scarcely feel any great compassion for thanks to her hubris or bestial affinities- is ironic indeed. She turned her 'jhetani' into an 'pativrata' Queen Regent while destroying her own son's inheritance. 

The pity of it is that Varun- who has written an okayish book on the farmer's problems- might have saved the INC from the oblivion it has inherited thanks to the moon-calf Rahul. 

Maneka was not lacking in virtue or breeding or combativeness. It is foolish to blame a young person for what some elderly savants see in her horoscope. But her 'shakti' was 'pratiloma'- against the grain- because she was never ready to fight her own bestial affinities and inclinations. Herself, her own Circe, she is the polar opposite of Smriti Irani. It is a shame that she has brought down her own son- who, if the savants are correct, will kill himself as his grandfather did. Of course, it may be, his wife's horoscope alters this outcome. But can it? Maneka is being squeezed out of the BJP and, by reason of pratiloma, will take her son with her. Where? Into 'maru'- the desert where creatures die. Perhaps, like Sanjay's, Varun's death will be recorded as an accident. Perhaps not.

Sonia is the 'pativrata' daughter-in-law par excellence who, had Rahul not been a Moon-Calf, might have gone down in History as the uncrowned Dowager Empress of India. Maneka- already dismissed as a rabid dog for her pornographic expose of Jagjivan Ram's son- is now the antithesis of not just Ardhanarishvara but also Nirlajjishvara- as the foul mouthed champion of equally stray or rabid dogs. 

Thank God for Narendra Modi! Imagine a Kurukshetra with Maneka on one side and Sonia on the other! 

Schrodinger's Cat, Wigner's Friend & Karen Barad

She said-

Because thy tongue's art is so entangled with my soul's twat

In my own heart, I live but as Schrodinger's cat

He said-

The arc of the Moral Universe towards Bastardy must bend

  Truth wedded to Wigner is bedded by Wigner's friend.

She-

Listen, limp dick, I was just trying to be ...

He- 

Nice. I know. It's not you. It's 

(both together)

Me!

She- 

Let's

He (speaking very quickly)

Never do this again!

(both together) 

OMG! We sound like an old married couple!

(confused noises followed by prolonged screams and the sound of ambulance sirens)

He- 

Did you have to leave your dentures in your twat?

She- 

Yes! It is de rigueur. 

Read a little Karen Barad why don't you?

(both together) 

All Hail Karen Barad!

May they fuck themselves! 

Pratap Bhanu Mehta as a Malayali Marilyn Monroe

Ushering in the New Year, the always ridiculous Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes in the Indian Express-

(Narendra Modi) exemplifies the core of the prophetic mode, which is the disguising of a failure.

Modi is Hindu. Hinduism has no Prophets. True, Mahatma Gandhi- because of his engagement with Christianity, Judaism and Islam- may be considered a 'prophet' who heard God and who promised to deliver Swaraj within 18 months and deliver India from poverty through the Spinning Wheel and to achieve Hindu Muslim Unity and so on and so forth. But Indians know that Gandhi was not a prophet. He was a politician who, for selfish reasons of our own, we may from time to time chose to treat as a 'Great Soul' revealing Divine Truths. 

As the political theorist, Eric Voegelin, once wrote in a totally different context, “precisely when its dubiousness as a pragmatic record is recognised, the narrative reveals its function in creating a people in politics, and history.”

Voegelin died long before Google Search and Wikipedia became available. Also he wasn't talking about countries like India which rejected hystresis ridden history for the pure game-theoretic ergodics of 'Itihasasa'. That is perfectly sensible. We employ Economists, not Historians, to manage our Pension funds and design our fiscal policy and so forth.

 Still, in Vogelin's own time, there was the notion that 'cognitive dissonance' led to a hard-core of 'believers' sticking with failed eschatological prophesies. Indeed, Radhakrishnan dismisses Christianity as founded on the cognitive dissonance of those Jews who expected the End of Days to occur in their own life time. Nowadays, we understand this phenomenon in terms of the advantage of using a costly signal to establish a separating equilibrium. Cognitive dissonance is reinforced where it is regret minimizing to prefer a discoordination game. 

But, Jews pre-existed its prophets (as opposed to legendary figures like Abraham or Moses) as did the Arabs and the Latins and the Greeks and so forth. Hinduism has been around for thousands of years. India exists because Hindus of the former British Empire preferred to club together. 

Indian politics is not based on prophesy. It is based on expected relative performance. Even if a politician fails, if people think his closest rival would do even worse then the guy gets re-elected.

Mehta won't admit that Modi is P.M because no rival candidate has been offered for the top job. We all believed that Rahul would be the Congress candidate in 2014. We didn't know whether the BJP would put up Advani or hedge its bets by saying that the P.M would be picked after the elections in consultation with allies. Nobody thought Rahul would both refuse to put himself forward and prevent anybody else  from acting as caretaker. 

Mehta refuses to acknowledge this fact. He thinks Modi remains unassailable because of some theological or mystical process which surpasses all understanding. 

It is not the practical record, it is the ability to occupy the space of prophetic deliverance in the face of failure that is the attraction.

Why doesn't Mehta himself start prophesying? Is he afraid that Ind's womanhood will find him so attractive that they will drown him in their pussy juices? Or, is it just me who has nightmares of that sort? 

This is linked to a second theme: That of sacrifice — the people not just as objects to be served, but to be elevated by enlisting them in a higher cause.

As opposed to what? The people being subjugated by enlisting them in a lower cause- e.g. that of drowning Mehta in their pussy juices?  

And the third theme is the invocation of constant danger:

Sensible heads of government stress that constant danger exists till COVID is conquered 

This project of the redemption of the people is always at risk from an enemy.

Mehta's enemy is Modi. His vacuous shite is intended to save the Indian people from the constant danger posed by the BJP   

The narrative of redemption needs an enemy, against which to define itself, to get charged; if there isn’t one, one will be invented for you.

Mehta & Co invented an enemy called 'Hindutva' which was supposed to have set up concentration camps and gas chambers by now.  Sadly, this was not a 'common' enemy at all.  

This deeply charged invocation of the people has been a disruptive force in a democracy.

No. A military coup may 'disrupt' democracy as may pervasive corruption and incompetence under a cozy cartel of dynastic parties of a casteist type.  But, so long as at least one party is meritocratic and bothers with 'last mile delivery', Democracy isn't 'disrupted' at all. Some political dynasties may die out. Others may re-invent themselves with the aid of less shite darbari intellectual than Mehta & Co. 

It is otiose

no. It is pointless 

to deny its ability to politically mobilise, especially in the absence of any counter prophetic narrative that is more elevating.

We have had plenty of prophets of the doom that was bound to descend on India if the BJP got elected. Nobody may be listening to them, but they do get published in the Indian Express- probably as a cruel joke. 

But its overwhelming danger should be apparent. For one thing, the people in this construction are an abstraction, unified and marching to the same drum beat.

Mehta is decrying only the abstractions he has himself constructed. 

The minute any actual people assert their reservations, express their individuality, or pose pragmatic facts against wild prophecy, they are immediately branded as being outside of the pale of the people, they are the anti-nationals.

Whereas Mehta & Co are the business of branding anyone they don't like a Fascist. 

So the rhetoric of the people can be turned against groups of actual people, one at a time. It is an enemy of both freedom and fraternity.

Mehta is a Professor of some shite subject which thinks 'rhetoric' matters. It doesn't. Modi knows that. That's why he is Prime Minister despite only having an  M.A in Poli Sci (that too as an external student) whereas Mehta has a PhD from Princeton. 

It is a threat to individual freedom because it has no commitment to its value.

Threats to individual freedom can come from guys who have strong commitments to its value. This is because individual freedoms are costly to maintain. Sometimes they have to be reduced so as to survive and burgeon later on.  

Concrete individuals, with their own histories and concerns, temperament and ambitions, loves and identities, are of no interest and are a threat, if they are not drum beating for the prophetic cause.

Or, in the case of Modi, actually ruling the country to the great chagrin of this mere rhetorician or sophist.  

It is an enemy of whatever fraternity exists, because it is deeply communal:

In which case it is the friend of at least one type of fraternity- viz that which subsists within its own community.  

The only deliverance it can promise is the dominance of that ugly construct, Hindutva, whose content is nothing but the raw assertion of power.

But Hindus have dominated Hindu majority parts of British India more or less continuously since 1937. 'Raw assertion of power' is what has preserved India's territorial integrity. The Balakot strike probably helped Modi win re-election. Mehta may disapprove of the Indian people. He is welcome to go seek fraternity elsewhere. 

But if the BJP ultimately mobilises the people,

or turns them into a bunch of flowers 

but then converts them into an abstraction

& then converts that bunch of flowers into a purely notional bouquet 

that can be deployed for violent purposes,

because a notional bouquet could shoot out deadly lasers 

the BJP’s critics also have a kind of problem with the people.

because the people are now a notional bouquet shooting out deadly lasers at all and sundry 

This is true in both political and non-political circles. To put it bluntly, the problem can be put this way.

 To put it even more bluntly, Mehta put the problem up his arse.  

In the wake of the BJP’s growing success and the ascendancy of Hindutva, there is a new kind of misanthropy towards the people.

Which means there was an old kind of misanthropy towards the people on the part of those who are anti-BJP. No wonder the Indian people didn't vote for cunts who hated them. 

If some elites are embarrassed that the people don’t understand economic development,

Which elites? The ones who didn't understand economic development was about actually growing the economy- not talking bollocks incessantly?  

others are horrified that large numbers have thrown in their lot with the BJP.

So what? They were already horrified that so many people were Indian rather than Norwegian.  

This worry might be understandable,

if 'elites' are, by nature, misanthropic and racist to their own 

but it is a challenge for democracy.

Fuck off! If cunts like Mehta don't like Indian democracy they are welcome to emigrate.  

Some might console themselves that the people might have been duped by unfair means. But the refrain you constantly hear, that “India has changed”, is not meant so much as a description as an alibi, as if to say it is going to be difficult to actually redeem the people.

Coz that's Mehta's forte, right? Redeeming people in between walking on water. Hail to our Redeemer! 

This misanthropy is, of course, politically self-defeating.

It is irrelevant. These guys aren't standing for election.  

Exuding the sense that people are dupes or evil is not a propitious starting point for a democracy, and only reinforces the political pathologies it is meant to encounter.

Democracy in India started twenty years before this cunt was born.  

When there are shards of resistance, a CAA movement or a Punjab farmers’ movement, an occasional local electoral victory, the Opposition suddenly embraces the people in all its glory. But the blunt truth is that it has been difficult to translate these movements into a broader fraternity or political coalition. And as soon as they are managed, repressed, or negotiated, we will go back to wondering what the people want. The truth is we have not learnt a political language that can thread the needle of calling out the authoritarian and communal poison now in our democracy, without at the same time indicting the people. We exude the paradoxical air of fighting for democracy without faith in the people.

The truth is plain to all. Mehta & Co never fought for shit- except tenure or worthless credentials. Nobody gives a toss for their opinion of anything. 

Outside of political contexts there is enough vitality, creativity and reciprocity, where the people are expressing themselves in all their concreteness, individuality and complexity, more than enough to sustain faith in the face of political disillusionment. But we will need a new mode of conversation to capture that. T S Eliot once wrote that “last year’s words belong to last year’s language; and next year’s words await another voice.”

In 2021, Mehta will talk Malayalam in the voice of Marilyn Monroe. Shashi Tharoor will marry him coz them Jains be loaded right? Then Mehta will be discovered dead in a 5 star Hotel Room. 

So the question for Indian democracy is: In which language will we learn to speak of the people where we don’t avoid the horrifying impasse we are at?

Come to think of it, Rahul will have to learn Malayalam to stay in Parliament. Sonia will beat Dr. Tharoor with her chappal if he comes sniffing around.  

The BJP claims to speak the language of the people without democracy, and the Opposition wants to speak the language of democracy without the people. Happy New Year.

In fairness, the Opposition isn't Mehta level stupid. All they need to do is get better organized at the booth level and show they can do last mile delivery even better than the BJP. However, which Party rules isn't really that important. Indeed, Politics doesn't matter very much. But Mechanism Design does. But that's a subject for Economists- not the Academic sort but people who can actually deliver more of what is needed for less than it currently costs.