Najeeb Jang demanding some red hot affirmative action

Najeeb Jang, who as Lt. Governor of Delhi was Kejriwal's bete noire, writes in the Indian Express-

The markaz of the Tablighi Jamaat at Nizamuddin is singularly responsible for the death of several persons and for passing on the coronavirus infection. Whoever runs the markaz is culpable and must be punished under the relevant sections of the IPC. It is incomprehensible that when the country is under lockdown and the Union and state governments are fighting a relentless war against a monstrous pandemic, a microscopic section of religious fundamentalists exposes large sections of the population to disease and fatality. However, it was also incumbent on the local administration to have been more aware and enforce an early evacuation.

The Print reports- ' in February about 16,000 Tablighis gathered at a mosque in Malaysia from across the region.

The New York Times reported that the participants in the 16,000-strong gathering of the world’s biggest Islamic missionary movement had spread the coronavirus to half a dozen nations, creating the “largest known viral vector in Southeast Asia”.
“More than 620 people connected to the four-day conclave have tested positive in Malaysia, prompting the country to seal its borders until the end of the month. Most of the 73 coronavirus cases in Brunei are tied to the gathering, as are 10 cases in Thailand,” the daily reported.

On 18 March, Al Jazeera, quoting Malaysian Health Minister Dr Adham Baba, reported that only half of the Malaysian participants who attended have come forward for tests, raising fears that the outbreak from the mosque could be more far-reaching.

Even in Pakistan, 27 members of Tablighi Jamaat, out of the 35 screened at their headquarters in Raiwind, tested positive for coronavirus Sunday.

Clearly the Tablighi Jamaat- which has a big presence in the U.K- is an international organization and the problem it is causing is not confined to India. Yet Najeeb Jang concentrates only on the Muslim community in India. Why? It was Malaysia where this problem emerged. Muslims in Malaysia are the dominant community. Why dwell on 'the malaise' of Indian Muslims when this problem was created outside India in a wealthier, Muslim dominated, country?

This brings me to the larger malaise facing the Muslim community in India. No one can deny the sad situation they face.

Najeeb Jang is a Muslim. Why does he 'other' his fellow Muslims in India. Why does he not say 'no one can deny the sad situation we face?' Is it because no one could deny that he has not been discriminated against? He has done well for himself as numberless other Muslims in India have done well for themselves?

Most live on the margins of society: Poor, ill- educated and fast losing faith in a government they believe is not, and indeed, will not be fair to them.

Najeeb Jang was accused by Kejriwal of serving that Government. Is he writing in this vein so as to create, in the minds of his readers, the impression that he was a poor and ill-educated fellow who wrongly put his faith in the Government and thus did their wicked bidding in all innocence?

Incidentally, the man is now Vice Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia University. He doesn't want to remind his readers of this- perhaps because it is considered a breeding ground for extremists- and so his article ends with the comment 'The writer is a former civil servant'.

Not that their situation has been better under earlier governments but the understanding is that the “hand” of the government was not that heavy.

Najeeb Jang's hand was described as not just heavy but unconstitutional by Arvind Kejriwal. Why does Jang speak coyly of some occult 'understanding' that the Government is wicked? Either it is wicked or it isn't. Either he was the mercenary minion of that wickedness or, poor and ill-educated and terminally stupid as he may claim to be, the wicked government took advantage of his mental, not moral, infirmity and used him as a bumboo up Kejriwal's anus.

But blaming the governments of the day has become a habit. It is time the Muslim community understood the faultlines that lie within.

One 'fault-line' is that between a Muslim like the writer and those who he writes about as being stupid, ignorant, and crazier than bed bugs.

It is abundantly clear that the pedagogical system of education in madrasas is outdated.

While the pedagogical system of Jamia Millia is not just outdated, it is utterly shite.

Efforts are being made in some madrasas to teach English, the sciences and mathematics, but there are not many such schools. Students are taught to memorise the Quran, and it’s a matter of immense pride for a family if a child of eight or 10 years of age becomes a “hafiz”.

That's a useful skill. I'd rather employ a driver who is a 'hafiz' than a stoned graduate of Jamia Millia. A kid who is a Hafiz at the age of 8 is a kid who can crack the NEET at 18. India needs more Doctors with good Morals and a willingness to work in rural areas. Let's target those young 'Hafizes' and get them into Medicine. Not just the Indian Muslim Community, but Hindus and Christians would happily support such an initiative because the benefit extends to all- as the current pandemic reminds us.

No doubt a large number of Muslim boys and girls are studying under the regular education system of schools and colleges, but a larger number is confined to the madrasa system.

'Confined?' Are Madrasas jails? Is Islam some sort of cult? Non Muslims have no problem admitting that Islam is a highly Moral and Spiritual Religion. Its traditional Madrasas may be under-resourced- but so are many Public Schools- and their curriculum may be out of date- but this is equally true of many of our 'Liberal Arts' Universities. Nobody- except militant atheists and Communists- deny the moral efficacy and character building qualities of the Islamic Madrasa, or the Hindu Patshala, or the Jewish Geshlekht-shul (what? I'm Liberal Reform), or the Catholic sodomitical seminary or the type of  Lesbian Anglican Academy which has its own category on Pornhub.

Therefore, the larger problem is that the community is being dominated by maulvis and maulanas, who sit in seminaries and mosques, and make a fashion of issuing fatwas.

How scandalous! A Religious community is dominated by Divines! By contrast, the Pope gains a living by delivering Pizzas to Catholics.

I have a vast number of non-Muslim friends who have enormous sympathy for the Indian Muslim community.

Similarly, I have a number of non-Hindu friends who often say 'your poor family- how they must suffer! Indeed, we feel sorry for the entire Hindu community. It must be tough for them to know you were born into their Faith.'.

They are extremely concerned about their economic conditions, lack of education, and poor and inadequate political leadership.

Yes, yes. They are so very 'extremely concerned' that they give away a goodly portion of their wealth to help Muslims- I don't think.

They talk of India’s inherent secularism, the strength of its Constitution and they challenge the cow urine-drinking parties as a means to fight the virus.

How do they challenge the cow urine drinking parties? Is it by drinking a lot of whiskey and then waving their dicks in the air? If not, why bring up the subject? There is no other way to challenge cow urine drinkers.

However, they are also fighting an increasingly losing battle against the Hindu right, and the fence sitters, when challenged on Muslim conservatism and archaic beliefs.

The problem was that that they were also fighting an increasingly losing battle against the realization that they were a bunch of losers.

The fact is, as I have said before, today’s Indian Muslims suffer from an intellectual paralysis.

Well, we all know one Indian Muslim who suffers from intellectual, but sadly not writerly, paralysis.

An earlier generation of scholars used to study such thinkers like Ibn Arabi, Fakhruddin Razi, Einstein, Bergson, Russel and Freud.

Studying all of them was a recipe for intellectual confusion. Just sticking with Einstein and Dirac and so forth got Abdus Salam a Nobel prize in Physics.

The task, once again, is to rethink Islam without completely breaking from the past.

Nonsense! It is to do useful stuff and then say 'Aha! This is how Scripture helps us do this useful stuff even more usefully!'

The only course open is, as Allama Iqbal articulated, “to approach modern knowledge with a respectful but independent attitude and to appreciate the teachings of Islam in the light of that knowledge.”

But Iqbal was a shithead. Good poet, but shithead all the same. The point about 'modern knowledge' is that it is our contemporary and we are all already part of it to a greater or lesser extent. By doing useful stuff and working out ways to do it better we expand modern knowledge. For some chosen spirits, the great truths of Revealed Religion concerning the unseen realm are as lanterns by which they see their way forward. This is inspiring and conducive to Faith for the rest of us mere mortals. Thus, Abul Sattar Edhi may, for all I know, have been guided purely by his understanding of Islam to set up his Charitable Foundation. But it applies and expands 'modern knowledge' in an exemplary manner.

It is never possible for any society, more so a religion, to entirely forget or reject its past.

Yet, Islam claims to reject and forget the 'Jahiliya' past of its place of origin. Indeed, all Religions make a radical break with what went before. This is a good thing. We don't want to keep sacrificing our first born to Moloch.

And there is no doubt that in the years succeeding the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) death, Islam and Islamic history can indeed boast of a glorious era. What is equally true is that Islam, particularly India’s Muslims, have to free themselves from the medieval fantasies of maulanas, and embrace more contemporary attitudes.

No. Plenty of 'contemporary attitudes' are utter shite. Embracing useful stuff is useful. Religion is certainly useful, if it keeps you on the straight and narrow.

The Quran has to be understood for its inductive reasoning and a revolt against traditions and speculative philosophies.

Nonsense! The Quran is wholly imperative ('insha') and reveals the truths of the unseen realm. It has nothing to do with 'inductive reasoning' because it is unconcerned with empirical knowledge ('khabar'). How could it be a 'revolt' against 'traditions' and 'speculative philosophies' when no such things obtained at its point of origin?

The dynamism of debate (ijtihad) must be reignited.

Rubbish! Nothing good came of it in the past nor will anything come of it in the future.  A Debate between shitheads is still just a great big lump of shit.

Traditionally, from the days of the Prophet (PBUH), debate and pursuit of scientific knowledge was encouraged.

But debate and the pursuit of scientific knowledge had burgeoned more before either Christianity or Islam had become hegemonic. Subsequent Renaissances depended on rediscovering Aristotle and Euclid and so forth till Europe in the Seventeenth Century turned a decisive corner and abandoned Scholasticism and Theology.

The Prophet (PBUH) exhorted his people to travel as far as China for acquiring knowledge, and in the same vein Iqbal said: “Manzil se aage badhkar manzil talaash kar/ Mil jaaye tujh ko dariya, samandar talaash kar (search ever onwards for a destination that lies beyond where you reach/ If you discover a river, then search onwards for the sea)”.

By contrast, Newton never exhorted his people to go to China, instead of using their own brains and doing experiments. Einstein did sometimes talk Iqbal level vacuous bollocks to the Press, but he was careful not to do so to smart people.

Through the anti-CAA, NRC and NPR protests, the Indian Muslim found a new voice.

No. Some Indian Muslim women- not the smartest by any means- found themselves used as the ventriloquist's dummy by a very silly voice indeed. Declaring the Constitution to be their 'holy book', these women were affirming that Cow-Protection (which is a Directive Principle) was a sacred cause for them.

The greatest upside to this movement was the women who, for the first time in India (I do not refer to women in Islamic history who participated in wars along with men), found a voice.

And then lost it after making a nuisance of themselves and gaining nothing.

The men were left to help with logistics. Hopefully, this new lease of life is a harbinger of better times for the women.

Hopefully? Delusively. But a delusion is not hope.

But what hopes do we have from the men?

What hopes do we have from this man? None at all.

Institutions like the Tablighi Jamaat, however well-intentioned they may be, and whatever good religious activities they may perform, are not helping the community move forward.

& this guy is?

The religion isn’t to blame — it is the closed minds of these self-proclaimed leaders. By one thoughtless action, the markaz in Nizamuddin has harmed the Muslim cause many fold.

Not really. Most of us aren't science nerds. We sympathize with people who make the sort of mistake we make. What annoys the fuck out of us is things like Shaheen bagh- i.e. public nuisances of a type we are too stupid to commit.

On the other hand, the government is not helping. The constant and repeated “othering” of the Muslims is pushing them further into a darker corner.

But it is this guy who refers to Muslims as 'them' rather than 'we'. The BJP makes a point of speaking of 'Muslim brothers', this Muslim refuses to do so. The Tablighis are his alterity, but so are the 'poor, ill-educated' rest. The only friends he mentions himself as having are 'non-Muslims'.

The repeated lynchings and beatings,

are illegal. Why does this ex-Lieutenant General not get a bunch of senior people together to prosecute the culprits and campaign for something equivalent to the Dalit Atrocities Act. Hindus don't want crazy mobs running amok. The same guys who lynch Muslims might beat the fuck out of me if I happen to be travelling in a car which hits a cow.

ministerial gloating over the abolition of Article 370,

is not illegal. It was a long standing manifesto commitment of the BJP and it has been welcomed by the vast majority of Indians, including the Hindus of Jammu and the Buddhists of Ladakh.

the challenges posed because of the CAA,

what challenges? There are none. A few thousand people who were going to get citizenship anyway may get citizenship a little more quickly. The BJP got a boost from the foolish Muslim agitation against non-Muslim refugees gaining citizenship the way they always had.

the threat of the NRC/NPR,

threat to whom? Illegal immigrants. Nobody else. However, if Muslim minorities attack their neighbors from the majority community, and if they kill police-men, they will be killed and chased away regardless of their Citizenship

statements by minsters-members of the ruling party to punish “ghaddars”,

sadly, Muslims who try to kill non Muslims, where non Muslims are the majority, will get punished no matter in which country they reside. The statements of politicians in this regard are alethic and should be heeded.

the scorning of liberals and harassment of NGOs that work among Muslims,

is perfectly legal and, truth be told, often wholly salutary.

and the pogrom in Delhi,

what pogrom? Muslims killed policemen and non-Muslims. Then the majority turned on the minority and put it to flight. Had the police simply shot 20 or 30 of these lunatics on the first day- as happened in 1992- there would have been no need for non-Muslims to take matters into their own hands. Muslims too would benefit if their lunatic fringe is simply mowed down with police bullets from time to time.

have worsened fears among the Muslim community.

From which, once again, this gentleman, despite his Muslim name and heritage, stands aloof.

And herein lies the challenge.

What challenge? That of getting this cunt to see himself as an Indian Muslim rather than a Heaven Born Bureaucrat?

The challenge is not just for the Indian Muslim, it is for the country as a whole.

The challenge for the country as a whole is to ignore stupid shitheads with their litany of imaginary grievances.

The Muslims have the example of the Sikhs before them.

But the Sikhs don't have the example of the Muslim League before them. They failed to get a Khalistan similar to Jinnah's Pakistan.  This was probably a good thing for them.

Sikhs, too, follow a strict religious regimen. But they continually set examples of courage, generosity and prosperity.

When Sikhs drove out the Muslims so as to became a bare majority in present Punjab State, they went on to give Hindus short shrift. What this silly man is proposing is that Muslims should relocate to areas where they can become a majority and give non Muslims short shrift. This may actually succeed in West Bengal. It is unlikely to succeed in the Doab because the Hindus have martial qualities. In Delhi, 20,000 Muslims were slaughtered when Pundit Nehru became Prime Minister. Under his grandson, some 5,000 Sikhs were massacred. It is the presence of a Hindu Army and Police, which ensures no repetition of such extensive blood letting by removing the necessity for them.

The community has put behind the tragedies of Partition, followed by those of 1984.

Some British historians consider the Sikh jathas as having been the main instigators for the enormous blood-letting in the Punjab. 1984 was a tragedy from one point of view. From another it was a richly deserved punishment. That is why Rajiv Gandhi won a landslide victory in the Elections which immediately followed. Over the next decade some 50,000 extra-judicial killings were required to restore peace to that Province. It is very foolish to recommend to Indian Muslims that they follow the Sikh example of senseless killing swiftly followed by massive retaliation. At least the Sikhs had a territorial base and support from Pakistan. It is unlikely that Pakistan will open its doors to vast streams of Indian Muslim because, unlike the Sikhs, they may prefer to stay on in the Islamic Republic rather than return to sow havoc, or- what is more likely- be slaughtered before they can accomplish anything.

Now, it’s time for the new Muslim to step forward and engage with contemporary times as well.

Thankfully, Indian Muslims did this long ago. They are not an abject community- never have been, never will be. No doubt, some stupid politicians claimed they were 'backward' and needed special protection. But they weren't backward at all. They were virtuous. This may mean being poor- because one shares ones income with those who can not earn- or foregoing 'higher' education so as work and acquire wealth through honestly and diligence. It may mean 'storing up treasure in Heaven' rather than running hither and tither in a mad rush to get rich. But, these are the qualities of all good and spiritually inclined people. It rather endears the Muslim to his non-Muslim neighbor than results in 'othering'. By contrast, to deny one's brotherhood with Muslims- even if one is, as I am, a wine bibber and reprobate- so as to create some sort of sociologically subaltern and surd 'alterity' is to cut oneself off from Humanity. It is a self-maiming worse for the commonweal than the most vicious orgy of homicidal hatred. When one sins, even when one's whole community sins and sins terribly- there is the possibility of remorse and a redemptive type of suffering. But once we label good and God-fearing people as a 'Social Problem'- just because they may have a slightly lower per capita Income or level of educational attainment- then, as Mahatma Grundy observed- our dicks will surely fall off and, what's more, that 15 year old Single Malt you've been saving will turn out to have been drunk up by our nephew who, very thoughtfully, replaced it with his pee. I'm not saying that last has actually happened to me. Anyway, my dick hasn't actually fallen off. It just don't seem to get a lot of action these days what with the covid pandemic and all.

Perhaps that is what Vice Chancellor Jang is getting at when he concludes-

And, it is for the government to understand that the operative word in the context of the community is “affirmative action”, not “appeasement”.

So don't appease Vices. Affirmatively secure them some red hot action. Not that I got much of that when I was at Uni. Still, the young people at Jamia Millia deserve better. Do them all a favour my dear Vice and Tod the Pinjras which cage them from each other's hot bods. Otherwise they will all turn into dadis squatting on the road at Shaheen Bagh hoping for some affirmative action.

Gwilym David Blunt showing why Resistance is futile

Rights exist if they are linked to Remedies under an incentive compatible bond of law. If there is no Remedy, or if it is not in the interest of the obligation holder to provide that Remedy- i.e. they can avoid that duty without paying much of a penalty- then Rights don't exist save, at the margin, as a talking point or a public nuisance.

'Cheap talk' pooling equilibriums represent coordination games of a certain type. However, they are vulnerable to busybodies who arbitrage on discoordination games. In other words, a norm which may be perfectly harmless within a homogenous population, and thus is self-reinforcing, is turned into a nuisance by being applied in an absurd or transgressive context. This can yield a rent for a 'moral entrepreneur' with an 'interessement' mechanism which is mischievous because it is based on an incompossible Structural Causal Model.

What happens if the assumption is made that Rights exist independent of the incentive compatibility of the corresponding Remedy? Let us see-

Gwilym David Blunt, a lecturer in some Soft Subject for the soft in the head, writes in Aeon-

Resistance is a human right. This is why the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that people will be ‘compelled to have recourse, in the last resort, to rebellion’ if human rights are not respected, and why the defence of human rights framed in many United Nations resolutions supports resistance against colonialism and apartheid.

Did the UN provide any remedy to Human Rights violations? Not in general, no. Still, the fact is, in International Relations, a successful Rebellion can create a de facto Regime which it is may be useful to recognise on its own terms as a de jure sovereign State. But, if a Rebellion has no chance of success- indeed, if it is not a Rebellion at all but simply a stupid nuisance- then reliance on the UN Declaration is foolish and mischievous.

The UN Declaration is currently utterly useless. Tibetans or Uighurs gain nothing from it whatsoever. Proclaiming a Right without providing a reliable Remedy is cheap talk of a worthless type.

It could not be otherwise. If your rights are violated, you must have a recourse.

A recourse is not a recourse if it is entirely ineffective. I have a right to life. Unfortunately, it becomes increasingly ineffective as I age. It is not the case that some recourse exists such that I can avoid death indefinitely.  Thus my 'right to life' is meaningless. No doubt, it may feature in the judgment of a court. But that judgment may be equally effective or ineffective if it made no mention of this soi disant right and stated its ratio using some other terminology.

Normally this would be found in the law and the courts but, when faced with severe and intransigent injustice, resistance is that recourse.

Nonsense! Resistance may lead to an abrupt termination of even such parlous amenities as were previously available. It is sheer magical thinking to hold otherwise.

But when others are resisting, and we are sympathetic to their aims, what should we do?

What we are doing is not resisting. We may say 'I should be resisting but am not' but this statement is about as meaningful as 'I should be Beyonce but am not.'

The answer is surprising.

Meaningless statements may be surprising. Why? Because there is little point making the conform to rationality or communicative sense.

From autumn 2018 for about a year, the group known as Extinction Rebellion (XR) staged a number of disruptive protests in the United Kingdom, on London’s bridges and across several city centres, bringing road traffic to a standstill.

What was the outcome of this 'Resistance'? The Tories, under BoJo- whom the UK's Chief Scientist said had presided over 'devastating' cuts in the fight against climate change while Foreign Secretary- won a stunning victory. The public turned against XR and the thing collapsed as its members faced mass arrest and legal problems of an expensive kind for which they had been inadequately prepared.

The protestors were drawing attention to the need for immediate action on the climate emergency.

That may have been their intention. But what they actually did was draw attention to their own stupidity and selfishness. The Green Vote is not electorally important- at least in first past the post polities. The lone Green MP in Westminster has no impact whatsoever. This is a far cry from what activists had hoped for- Greens holding the balance of power in a coalition with Corbynista Social Justice Warriors and SNP mavericks. What has happened instead is the collapse of the 'Red Wall' and the Toryization of the Working Class which now sees the Greens as part of what Piketty calls 'the Brahman Left'- i.e. that portion of the educated middle class which is intent on destroying the material standard of living of workers for some hysterical virtue signalling purpose.

From their perspective, these were acts of resistance, drawing attention to injustice and inaction.

From everybody else's perspective they were a public nuisance.

What should someone who is sympathetic to this cause and to their action do?

Tell them to stop being so fucking stupid.  But, in that case, those lunatics might start baying for your blood. So the safer course is to keep mum.

If possible, nothing. But there are different ways of doing nothing. It matters that you do nothing in the right way and for the right reasons.

Just as it matters that you piss in the punch bowl for the right way and the right reasons- not simply coz  you're drunk and think the thing will be frightfully funny.

Let me explain.
Rights imply duties.

Only if the rights' holders apply in proper legal form for remedies involving  identifiable obligations' holders under a specific vinculum juris. I may say 'I have a Right to Food' and steal your sandwich and eat it. But you are not the obligation holder for this Right of mine. In order to assert it, I may need to bring a case against the Public Food Distribution System or the Department of Social Security of some such statutory entity. However, under exigent circumstances, that entity may have a sovereign immunity defence against providing the remedy.

If you have a right to something, other people owe you certain duties.

Nonsense! Some specific obligation holder may owe you a duty under a given vinculum juris. But that obligation holder may owe a superior duty to deny you that right. This is a matter for lawyers and judges.

There are at least three negative duties that are generated by the right of resistance: non-interference, non-obstruction and non-collaboration.

Rubbish! There is no such viculum juris binding 'other people' as opposed to some specific statutory or other similar authority.

The simplest of these is the duty of non-interference. If a person has the right to do something, there is a fundamental duty not to prevent them from doing that thing.

There may be a more fundamental duty, or a superior right, to prevent them doing that thing. Thus if I try to grab your sandwich while claiming that this represents 'Resistance', you have a superior right to use reasonable force to defend yourself and your property. This is a matter for the police and the courts.

So, if a person is enacting their right to resistance, then bystanders have an obligation to forbear and not to interfere.

That may be the view taken by a Court. But, equally, it may not. In practice, 'bystanders' may have a right- which they may consider a duty- to kick the fucker's head in. Consider a paedophile enacting their resistance to oppressive laws re. raping kiddies outside a primary school. It is likely that the fellow's brains will form an artistic smear upon the sidewalk after Mums have done with him.

This seems obvious, but there was a rather shocking instance during the London XR protests where this duty was not respected.

Shocking? Most people thought it was entirely salutary. The police did say they might investigate those members of the public who beat the shit out of the two protestors- one of whom was a 'Buddhist teacher'- but nothing came of it. Juries won't convict commuters who have a go at nutters who are trying to make their journey even more hellish than it already is. Why did those nutters not target the limousines or helicopters of the rich? Why fuck with working people using public transport?

In October 2019, protestors stopped London trains from working by climbing on top of carriages. At Canning Town in east London, one protestor was dragged off the roof of a carriage and set upon by commuters. This is a violation of the duty of non-interference.

But it is an affirmation of a superior right, a higher moral duty, of an eusoical type. Public nuisances must be curbed, no matter how thickly 'Buddhist teachers' and the like may coat themselves in a marinade of virtue signalling histrionics.

It might be that people were angered by having their day disrupted, but this doesn’t excuse their behaviour.

It both explains and excuses it. It is noteworthy that a wholly illegal assault upon the protestors did not give rise to a prosecution despite their being a plethora of video evidence. By contrast, the actions of the protestors were judged to be criminal by a Court.

It might be irritating but we have an obligation to do nothing.

Sez who? Not the Courts. We are welcome to heckle protestors and use reasonable force to prevent them violating our rights. Indeed, we may have a duty of a superior sort to so humiliate and demoralize the perpetrators of public nuisances that thy stop being such stupid tossers.

Yet simply not interfering with individuals is not sufficient. Resistance to injustice is often organised. In addition to the obligation not to interfere with individuals, there must also be a duty of non-obstruction to organisations.

This is simply untrue. Nazis 'resisting' the presence of immigrants in a neighborhood can and should be opposed and obstructed by organizations of various types.

This is often overlooked, but there are numerous ways in which people can unintentionally obstruct organised resistance. In 1849, Henry ‘Box’ Brown escaped slavery by mailing himself in a box from Virginia to Pennsylvania. It became a sensation in the media, a fact lamented by the abolitionist Frederick Douglass because it effectively closed this path out of slavery: if journalists had been more circumspect, then more people might have escaped slavery by post.

This was silly. The fact is Prigg v Pennsylvania (1842) had prised open a door which the Fugitive Slaves Act of 1850 slammed shut. The 'Box' Brown escape and its attendant publicity had little real impact. It took a Civil War and three quarters of a million dead to put an end to the South's peculiar Institution. 'Resistance', by contrast, had little effect.

In the age of Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook and TikTok, it is easy to inadvertently obstruct organisations fighting injustice.

Only if they are crap. It is difficult to obstruct the FBI fighting injustice because they are a professional organization and may send you to jail if you obstruct them.

Posting a video or picture on social media could lead to a protestor being identified by the police or to escape routes being closed.

The sentencing of that protester may, on the other hand, help the cause by creating a martyr.

We should avoid getting in the way of what those who are performing acts of resistance try to do.

No. We should get a life which involves having some morally better purpose than 'performing acts of resistance'. One example is, not protesting, but putting an end to a glaring injustice. Another is saving lives as a Doctor or producing food and other essentials of life as a worker. Being a fucking drama queen virtue signalling support for the Environment, or the Palestinians or whatever is more likely to be a counter-productive nuisance than anything to be valued.

Living up to the duty of non-obstruction requires us to be more conscientious about the ways in which we communicate.

Whereas writing shite like this requires no conscientiousness whatsoever.

The final negative duty is that of non-collaboration with agencies that are suppressing resistance. If we shouldn’t inadvertently obstruct resistance, it follows that we shouldn’t actively help to suppress it. Agencies that are engaged in suppressing resistance often depend upon third-party assistance. As the academic Juan Espíndola found in his research on the German Democratic Republic of 1949-90, the wide network of ‘unofficial coworkers’ who informed on dissidents and provided logistical support to the Stasi were referred to as the state’s ‘respiratory organs’. Without collaboration, unjust regimes suffocate.

Not if they are sufficiently unjust. Shooting the families of non-collaborators may cause demographic replacement such that only collaborators survive.

By contrast just regimes are more, not less, vulnerable to non-cooperation and lack of public collaboration.

We might think that we aren’t pressured to collaborate like this today, but one might look at Apple’s decision in 2019 to remove an app that sought to inform prodemocracy protestors in Hong Kong where the police were concentrating and using tear gas.

Coz China is a tiny little country which only keeps going thanks to the kindness of Apple. Anyway, poorer people can't afford Apple. They use Android.

It is possible that, as resistance to climate change grows, ‘liberal democratic’ states might employ similar pressures. The rule is simple: don’t snitch.

A rule only the Mafia insists on. As resistance to the working class have a decent material standard of living increases, the resistors will have their fucking heads kicked in. Courts may try to sentence the aggressors but juries will acquit them. Politicians will get the message and laws too will change. The nuisance will be eliminated. Some lecturers may get the sack. What is certain is that kids will stop signing up for their worthless courses.

So we have at least these three obligations not to do things.

No. So far we have a stupid cretin telling idiotic lies.

Is there anything else we have a duty not to do? One option would be to follow the example of the philosopher Henry David Thoreau, who in 1846 stopped paying his taxes in response to the US government’s unprovoked war with Mexico and continued support for slavery. Thoreau refused to support a state so immersed in injustice. Ought we do the same in relation to the climate emergency? At this stage, I would say no. Democratic states still provide sufficient protection of human rights to warrant some continued support, though this could erode as the climate emergency escalates.

So this cretin thinks he is Thoreau- who wrote well but had zero influence. In any case, unlike the US, the country in which he lives has PAYE Income tax. In other words, the option to cheat on one's taxes and seek to withhold them for a conscientious reason is not available to most working people.

The sad truth is that stupid, only marginally productive, people like the author or his readers don't count for much.

This lends a ludicrous sort of pathos to his conclusion.

It’s not just what you do that matters, but what you don’t do, too.

He knows that the 'you' he is addressing will neither read, nor remember if they do read, his worthless shite. So he warms himself with the reflection that what his 'you' doesn't do, too, is all about his own private drama of moral grandiosity.

Madampat on the need for a Muslim Political Party

I recall, after 9/11, that some people claimed that no Muslim was guilty of that atrocity. Far from having initiated violence, Muslims were always and everywhere innocent victims of organized violence. Over the subsequent decades, though hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslims have indeed suffered terribly as a result of NATO's retaliatory war on terror, the number of people who cling to a narrative of Muslim non-violence has appreciably diminished, if it has not disappeared.

There is some pathology involved in Islamic politics such that a small, but powerful, minority takes it upon itself to attack innocent non-Muslims even if this is bound to lead to a catastrophe for a much larger numbers of Muslims.

Consider the Rohingya extremists who, according to Amnesty International, massacred Hindus- no problem, Hindus in Myanmar have no power- but also attacked Buddhists and soldiers of the ruling Junta. The consequence was quite horrible for the Rohingyas as anybody could have predicted. Yet, the thing happened. Some Liberals took a swing at Aung San Suu Kyi but they achieved nothing. Why? The entire world now thinks of the sufferings of Muslims as something they have probably brought upon themselves by foolishly committing atrocities against more powerful peoples.

In India, however, there are still some people who cling to the old script according to which Muslims never initiate violence.

Consider the following article Shahjahan Madampat has published in Outlook-

The communal violence that rocked Northeast Delhi two weeks ago, the massive human and material losses Muslims had to suffer and the indifference of all political parties to their plight make one conclusion inevitable: the only option left for Indian Muslims is to organise themselves politically.

It appears that some Muslims, under the leadership of a Councillor of the 'Common Man' party, initiated violence against the majority community. They suffered disproportionately subsequently. Would the Muslims have put up a better show if they had been organized politically by a Muslim Party? Madampat may be from Kerala where a Muslim Party exists. But Kerala is different from Delhi. Hindus are a bare majority there whereas they are an overwhelming majority in Delhi. Furthermore, Delhi has a tradition of ethnically cleansing Muslims. 20,000 Muslims were killed after Partition and countless more were forced to flee. It is extremely unlikely that a Muslim Political Party could change the outcome of a violent clash. What is more likely is that there would be a wholesale expulsion of Muslims. There is a good reason no 'Muslim League' survives anywhere save Kerala. If the thing appeared, it would be a disaster for the Muslim minority in the same way that Jinnah's Muslim League was a disaster for them.
On the other hand, if the Muslims had a political party which aimed at removing barriers of caste and creed between Muslims and which focused on improving life-chances for young Muslims regardless of gender, then, perhaps, the violent or criminalized element of the community would get marginalized. However, militant Islamists can get funding from abroad, so this is by no means a foregone conclusion.

All other choices they have so far exercised have been utterly futile.

In other words, no political party has helped the Muslims. Perhaps, as the Holy Quran says, God himself only helps a community when it begins to help itself.

A political formation led by members from within would have improved their chances of effective resistance against marauding mobs.

Sadly, this isn't the case. The majority- meeting 'effective resistance'- would have upped the ante and gone in for more systematic carnage. They would have been backed by the police and the Army. This is not a battle Indian Muslims can win- even if they are in the majority, as is the case in the Kashmir Valley.

This may not be obvious to a Muslim from Kerala. However, South Indian Muslims are bringing in money from the Gulf and are helping their fellow South Indian Christians and Hindus do the same thing. By contrast, the Muslims of the Doab are in a weak economic position.

That Delhi did not have a single recognisable leader from the Muslim community to speak and act on its behalf in this crucial hour is proof that the usual practice of dependence on, and exploitation by, the so-called secular parties is no longer tenable.

Sadly, Delhi's Muslims did have 'recognisable leaders'. They instigated violence which was bound to end with Muslims being disproportionately affected.

Four Reasons
There are four reasons why Indian Muslims should seriously think about bringing a major chunk of the community under a single political umbrella.

There is only one reason. A Muslim political party could get the various different Muslim groupings to work together to improve their lives and life-chances. However, one which concentrates on creating a para-military force will be rapidly destroyed.

First, the subjectivity of an Indian Muslim at the current juncture is very different from that of even her ardent non-Muslim secular supporter. Tweets by Yogendra Yadav and Nidhi Razdan during the violence are illustrative of this difference in subjectivities. Both worried about the reputational damage to India during the visit of the US President.

It appears that some Muslims were paid to create mayhem during Trump's visit. One or two may have made money out of it but the community as a whole paid a high price. As for Trump, he couldn't have cared less. The West now approves of countries which get tough with their Muslims. Failure to do so may lead to the export of Islamic terrorism. The last thing NATO wants is to be drone striking Muslims in India the way they have to drone strike Muslims in Pakistan and Yemen and so forth.

Although their commitment to Indian pluralism is beyond reproach, their social location allowed them the luxury of worrying about the country’s image, while a Muslim citizen could have only prayed for survival.

Really? Only Muslims in North East Delhi were affected and they were only affected because some of their number had attacked police-men and their non-Muslim neighbors.

For the Muslim, the pogrom threatened to kill her and her family and destroy her property.

Only if Muslims in her neighborhood had already killed non Muslims and destroyed their property.

The CAA/NRC/NPR posed a direct threat to her citizenship.

No it didn't. If non Muslims fleeing Islamic persecution gain citizenship- as has always happened- then no Muslim's citizenship is threatened.

She cannot open her door and tell the murderous mob with equanimity: “Friends, the President of America is here. The image of the country will suffer if you kill us and torch my house. Please come back a couple of days later”.

Nor could non Muslims who had been targeted first by Muslim mobs.

Second, dependence of Indian Muslims on ‘secular’ parties benefited the latter immensely throughout the period after Independence, but did little to protect the former during communal riots or to improve their material condition.

The weaker party gets bashed if it is foolish enough to start a fight. Politics can't change that brute fact. Kerala's Muslims were smart enough to go abroad and earn well. That is why their material condition improved. The Muslims who moved to North East Delhi hoped for a better life. However, some of their number ran amok provoking an asymmetric retaliation. But, if Malyallee Muslims in the Gulf ran amok, they would be shot out of hand. All Malyallees would be deported regardless of Religion. They would have killed the golden goose with a vengeance.

The lesson here is one all who run can read. Don't run amok if the result is that your people will get slaughtered and have to run away. Work hard. Make money. Don't knife policemen or commit arson.

No top leader from any ‘secular’ party had the courage to descend on the scene during the violence and offer their support to victims, primarily because they feared the loss of Hindu votes.

I fear this understates the case. 'Top leaders' don't give a damn about violence prone Muslims of very low socioeconomic status 'being taught a lesson' . Had a Dawoodi Bohra neighborhood been attacked, Modi and Amit Shah would have turned up in short order.

They believed, perhaps correctly, that a substantial segment of Hindus has bought into the Sangh Parivar propaganda about Hindu victimhood.

The trouble is non-Muslims no longer believe Muslim protestations of innocence. As for 'victimhood', what is the point in that? All over the world we see Muslims being punished in a draconian manner anytime they act up. Why be a victim when you can slaughter the terrorists quite cheaply with no repercussions whatsoever? Saudi Arabia and U.A.E are great friends with those who are tough on their terrorists. The world has changed but perhaps this 'Shahjahan' hasn't got the memo.

Had there been a strong political leadership within the Muslim community in Delhi, they would not have had the luxury of shirking their responsibility. Apart from the possibility of such a Muslim leadership standing by their people, they would also have been able to curb fanatical elements within the community that went berserk, attacking innocent Hindus in neighbouring areas.

This is the reason there is no 'strong political leadership within the Muslim community'. The fanatics would kill off any 'Liberals' who deny that 'Islam is in danger' or that the C.A.A isn't about stripping Muslims of Citizenship or that it wasn't Muslim 'fanatics who went berserk' who started the trouble.

Third, our political history has demonstrated that marginalised communities tasted political empowerment and a modicum of self-confidence only when they organised themselves politically--BSP, SP, RJD, IUML are some examples.

We are speaking of coalition politics here. The question is why hasn't there been a UP or Bihar Muslim League on the Kerala IUML model? Is it because politics in those states was thoroughly criminalized a long time ago?

Fourthly, a right-thinking social and political leadership for Muslims now is the best bet against possible radicalisation and foolhardiness.

The problem with 'right-thinking' Muslim leaders- like Arif Mohammad Khan- is that they may end up with the BJP because their own Community might have its own ideological 'wedge issues' or irrational shibboleths- e.g triple talaq. This relates to the wider question as to why the Islamic World shows no real equivalent to the Christian Democratic or Christian Socialistic Parties of Europe.  Where is the Islamic equivalent of Merkel? Ten years ago, we might have said- Erdogan is such a man. But who would say that now?

The political situation now is so completely pitted against the community that extremist elements wanting to fish in troubled waters will find their task much easier.

Not if they keep getting arrested and tortured and hanged. Fishing in waters filled with very stupid fish is something Intelligence Agencies are good at. What follows is Gaza type ghettoization with limited internet access and everybody's mobile being tapped.

Our pride in the fact that only a few hundred Indian Muslims out of 200 million ever joined the ranks of global Jehadi outfits may soon become passé.

Sadly, this is a reflection of the low opinion Arabs have of Indian Muslims. In the Caliphate, they were assigned menial jobs.

Indian Muslims never fell for jehadi adventurism precisely because the sense of equal citizenship the Constitution granted them made them feel at home in spite of it being far from equal in reality.

So, this guy feels pride that few Indian Muslims joined the jihadis because...they were so stupid as not to be able to recognize reality.

Now they feel a sense of betrayal by allies on one hand and a sense of psychological disenfranchisement and imminent denial of citizenship, even physical annihilation by enemies, on the other.

This may be true. But if it is true, then the Opposition parties have much to answer for. They have lied to a poor, ignorant- and very very stupid, by Madampat's account- section of the population.

Muslims have lost faith in all institutions in the country­—government, police, judiciary, media, civil society and political parties.

So what? No great harm is done in being sceptical of the institutions of what is still a very poor country. What Muslims need is to have faith in their own good character, piety, family values, hard work and enterprise. Without this type of collective faith, no community can come forward even if it is relocated to Sweden- or rather, more particularly if it is relocated to Sweden. Dependence is not a good thing. It is not what Islam- or any other Religion- teaches.

They know that hate against them is spreading like wildfire among Hindus.

Sadly, it isn't just Hindus. Hatred of Muslims is now more common than not among non-Muslims the world over.

They also know that among the disseminators of hatred are people who hold the highest positions in the land, who meticulously work on new laws and policies aimed at consigning Muslims to an infernal existence in their own country.

Muslims may be hated but nobody wants to spend money on doing anything other than kill them if they attack. Why waste resources on constructing a Hell for Muslims to inhabit? How does this boost one's standard of living? Where is the profit in it?

Madampat has succumbed to Manichaean thinking. Why not take the next step and start foaming at the mouth and gabbling about the Jews and the Free Masons and the diabolical Christian plot to deny that Muhammad was the final Prophet?

This kind of an abject situation is fertile for radicalism and extremist tendencies to take root.

So what? Killing radicals and extremists is cheaper than enforcing laws which would criminalize the sort of black propaganda Madampat is spewing here.

Unless a political and social leadership—with a strong moral fibre and committed to the values and ideals of the Constitution—emerges within the community, the existing leadership vacuum will be filled by impetuous zealots and cynical rabble-rousers.

While cretins like Madampat publish this type of tripe.

Contours of a New Muslim Politics
This new Muslim politics should be Gandhian in its inclusivity, in its acc­eptance of diversity within and outside the community, in its commitment to Hindu-Muslim unity, in its adherence to non-violence.

In other words, the 'new Muslim politics' mustn't be Islamic at all. All Jihad must be 'inner' directed and should aim at things like absolute veganism and chanting the Gita and the Torah and the Bible along with the Quran.

It should not only be open to, but must proactively include within its ranks and leadership its overwhelming diversity—various sects, devout, atheist, irr­eligious, Sunni, Shia, gay, lesbian, transgender, freethinkers. In other words, anyone who is likely to be targeted as Muslim by Hindutva forces should have equal space in it.

Why hasn't this already happened? The answer is simple. 'Hindutva forces' retaliate against but don't otherwise target any type of law abiding Muslim. That is why this defensive alliance does not exist. On the other hand, the State has targeted Muslims in the past. Indeed, had India lost the '65 War, it is likely that a lot of Muslims would have been forced to flee despite being wholly innocent. Hopefully, India is now too strong for this danger to recur.

Second, women should take the lead in the formation and running of the political formation.

Like Shaheen Bagh? But that was an own goal. The BJP increased its seat count. Congress and the Left lost their deposits. Women doing stupid shite are still merely stupid shitheads.

History shows us that menfolk, imbued with macho patriarchy, have always subordinated greater common good to selfish motives. Shaheen Bagh has shown us spectacularly how a women-led movement can be qualitatively different, not prone to violence and remarkably stubborn.

But the thing failed! To quote Ghalib 'Ik tamasha hua, gila na hua'- there was a spectacle, but the complaint was not registered. Look what happened to the Greenham Common Women. They went on protesting nuclear weapons 9 years after they were all removed! The thing had about as much political importance as a sewing circle. Men may subordinate the common good to the desire to assert their masculinity but women too are quite content to make a nuisance of themselves for purely histrionic reasons.

Third, the new formation should eschew religious symbols and slogans, and instead choose symbols and icons of Indian nationhood.

But, if they are committing a public nuisance, sooner or later people will turn against them. The thing is childish play-acting.

Shaheen Bagh proved the efficacy of that approach not just as a tactic, but also as an inspiring model of citizenship assertion.

No it didn't. It showed Muslim women were stupid and ignorant and easily fooled.

The impassioned resort to the symbols and icons of India’s pluralist history and the reading of the preamble to the Constitution there and elsewhere created a new idiom of secular, yet not deracinated resistance.

Which failed.

Fourth, it should not be a monolith, but a loose umbrella of regional or state-based outfits. Because the political situation in the states differs from each other, a monolith will be counterproductive. It can also lead to a particular region or state developing hegemony over others. The only common ingredient at the national level should be a set of ethical principles and the dream of restoring India to its saner self.

It is dream of every lunatic to restore the sanity of everybody who treats him as a demented retard.

Fifth, it should keep out of electoral participation for at least a period of 10 years, focusing instead on organisational work, political education, social welfare and interfaith communication.

But if it keeps telling stupid lies like- C.A.A strips Muslims of citizenship- then over the course of a decade, even grannies and hysterical little girls will understand that the thing is demented.

Jumping into the fray will make it susceptible to all that is wrong in Indian politics. The suggestion is not to boycott polls, but to avoid them until such time that the community feels is ripe to form reliable electoral alliances.

Meanwhile, the BJP's Minorities cell will make steady inroads into the Muslim vote.

Sixth, it should build bridges with civil society groups to fight communal forces, environmental destruction and the denial of civil liberties and human rights.

Sadly, telling stupid lies does not 'build bridges'. It creates a pluralistic community of stupid liars who have no political influence whatsoever. This is a rainbow coalition of motley fools.

The difference between most such civil society groups and so-called secular parties is that the former is less likely to betray their ideals for temporary gains than the latter, which are prone to compromises and deception.

The problem with civil society groups is that they get taken over by unbalanced zealots with histrionic personality disorders. They can be effective in the short run, but medium to long term they damage their own cause by the shrillness of their rhetoric and their reckless disregard for the truth.

One example of this is that a majority of ‘secular’ parties have formed alliances with the BJP at one point or the other.

Would these 'secular' parties ally with a Muslim party? Sure! That's how secular they are!

Seventh, it should not do or say anything that will provoke more Hindus into the Sanghi fold. They should always maintain in their words and deeds the distinction between Hindutva and Sangh Parivar on the one hand and the larger Hindu society on the other.

What does this mean in practice? Surely, it is things like accepting the Supreme Court verdict upholding the contstitutionality of CAA and so forth. The fact is, non-Muslims feel people fleeing Islamic persecution should be given citizenship whereas Muslim economic migrants shouldn't.

The problem here is that the Sangh Parivar voices issues of concern to all Hindus. It would be foolish to endorse all their suggestions while vilifying them.

Eighth, the new political formation should keep away the temptation to indulge in identity assertion and focus on citizenship assertion.

So, shave your beard, take off your burqa, before taking to the streets.

Harsh Mander recently said: “The Muslim brothers and sisters and children who are present here are Indian by choice. The rest of us are Indians by chance. We had no choice. We had only this country. But you (Muslims) had a choice and your ancestors chose to live in this country. Today, those who are in the government are trying to prove that Jinnah was right and Mahatma Gandhi was wrong.”  

Why is this fool quoting Mander? Does he really think Indian Muslims chose to live in a secular Republic where cow protection is a directive principle of the Constitution? Are Indian Muslims less devout than Pakistani Muslims? They prefer not to live in an Islamic Republic as a matter of personal choice. They like being in a country where polytheists predominate. They swoon with delight when the Israeli Head of State receives a rapturous reception in India.

The fact is, the vast majority of Indian citizens had no choice regarding where they were born. Some non-Muslims had no choice but to flee to India and they do get citizenship. But is was a matter of chance that they didn't get butchered first.

It is the moral and historical duty of the Indian Muslims to prove Jinnah and Savarkar wrong, for that is the best tribute they can pay to their forefathers who chose to stay on in India.

Sadly, from what I have been able to glean over my long life, it seems the moral and historical duty of Indians & Pakistanis is to prove Jinnah and Gandhi wrong by emigrating to the UK or the US or Australia or Canada and thus giving their kids a better, more secure, life under the Rule of Law. In England, a Muslim or a Hindu can become Home Secretary or Chancellor of the Exchequer purely on the basis of merit and without having to condone any type of corruption or pledge loyalty to some incompetent dynast. The day may come when this will be equally true of India- but that day is distant.

Why can't India have a Left wing Party and a Right wing Party like other Democracies? Why should Religion and Caste still matter? The answer, I am sorry to say, is that India does not have an indigenous Economic theory. Thus 'Left' and 'Right' relate to a foreign terrain and can serve no orienting purpose, not utterly mischievous, on the Indian political landscape.

The Hindu Taoist's Panchamakara Tantra

Not Esotericism's bhukti Mantra nor Occasionalism's mukti Yantra

Informs this Hindu Taoist's Panchamakara Tantra

For, in the House of Islam, this old soak

Is a cat asleep on the Prophet's cloak

A shanda fur die goyim

With Petroleum Reserves sufficient only for its Paraclete to give Paradise extreme unction

Socialism preserves the Scholastically proficient as but its Abelard sign of dysfunction

With God glibly Gas Chambered & Goliard every Heloise's Seclusion

Marx's Misology is the Market for the Mitzvah of Exclusion.

Envoi-

Prince! To expand Ovid's Heroides to encompass you

Speak as Magdalene, or silence her Jew.

Why did the Lok Pal agitation succeed while Shaheen Bagh failed?

In 5th April 2011, the Gandhian activist, Anna Hazare began a hunger strike at Jantar Mantar. He was demanding an anti-corruption Ombudsman with wide-ranging powers. The agitation he spearheaded quickly snowballed.  The response of the Government was immediate. Nevertheless, there was blood in the water and the TV Yogi, Baba Ramdev, booked the Ramlila Maidan for a 40 day mass sit in. He hoped to spearhead an anti-corruption Political Party. On 5th June, the police attacked the protestors and arrested Ramdev who had tried to slip away in female attire. That put paid to him. But Anna Hazare was made of sterner stuff. He attracted prominent 'non-political' public figures- like Kiran Bedi, Arvind Kejriwal, the Bhushan father and son, as well as the revolting Swami Agnivesh who was quickly chased away.

On paper, the Lok Pal agitation was a success. Laws were changed. Apparently, there is now a Lok Pal though nobody knows what he or she is doing. On the other hand, Kejriwal's 'Common Man' Party emerged from this agitation and now rules the roost in Delhi. It may also be that Congress was wounded and Narendra Modi was helped by this movement.

Eight years later, student activists managed to mobilize elderly Muslim women to protest against the C.A.A bill which grants citizenship to non-Muslim refugees from Islamic Republics but which denies it to Muslim economic migrants from those countries. They hoped to widen the protest to include other suffering sections of society- e.g. distressed farmers- and to reduplicate the success of the Lok Pal agitation. However, they failed. It does not seem that 'Shaheen Bagh' has thrown up any new political party, or public figure who might follow in the footsteps of Kejriwal. Furthermore, this agitation seems to have helped the BJP and to have dealt the final coup de grace to Congress in Delhi.

Why did Shaheen Bagh fail so badly? One answer is that its organizers included two different types of lunatic student politicians. One was 'Pinjra Tod' (break the cage) whose main grievance is that girls in University Hostels have to return by 10 p.m. They aren't allowed to wander around at midnight getting raped. This is a terrible injustice. If boys, whom nobody wants to rape, can return to their Hostels at midnight, why shouldn't girls be accorded the same right? Everybody knows rape is due to the patriarchality of the performativity of gurr gurr de laltain of the Toba Tek Singh as has been fully explained by Bannerjee and Chatterjee. Thus girls should be allowed to roam around at all hours of the night due to gurr gurr de laltain will overthrow the Patriarchality of the Performativity of the gurr gurr de laltain. 'Pakistan Zindabad!' as a trans-gender activist- or just some silly girl paid to fly around India talking nonsense- said at a rally. She was going to go on to say 'Hindustan zindabad' but got arrested and is now in jail. The  shows the gurr gurr de laltain of the Patriarchality of the Perfomativity of Toba Tek Singh and has been fully explained by Chatterjee and Bannerjee- but not Mukherjee because that sly creature has gone and got a job with a MNC.

The other bunch of lunatics was the Kerala based Popular Front which derives from SIMI- the banned Islamic Student's movement which has produced some terrorists. However, there were plenty of artsy-fartsy students and 'Civil Society' activists in the melee. Both JNU and Jamia Millia students and faculty participated in the tamasha, making it attractive for the Liberal Media.

With hindsight, Shaheen Bagh was bound to fail. Why? The organizers were feminists. They wanted the thing to be female dominated. They saw that elderly Muslim women had nothing better to do than come and sit in Shaheen Bagh. But such women are not greatly respected. They are considered to be ignorant and stupid. Thus Modi was able to dismiss these protests as a demonstration of Muslim stupidity and ignorance.

Pinjra Tod tried to expand the protests to a poorer part of North East Delhi. But this led to violent rioting. As always, the Minority initiated the violence but paid a much higher price. Still, Muslim men matter. Elderly women in burqas don't. So Shaheen Bagh could have carried on in the same way that the British Government let the Greenham Common women carry on for 9 years after the cruise missiles they were protesting were removed as part of a wider treaty with the Russians.

What will happen now? Grants to certain Universities will be scaled back. Hostel fees will go up. Poor (BPL) students will receive cash while everyone else will be forced to pay more for Hostel accommodation. Girls' hostels will still have curfews because parents- and truth be told, most students- want this safety measure. If law and order breaks down, Girls hostels will be attacked by mobs of sex starved young men. Women in Delhi are the biggest losers if riots break out. They will be gangraped and trafficked around the country. Boys will simply be killed if they don't run away far enough or fast enough.

What about the Muslim women who protested at Shaheen Bagh? Will they get what they want? No. As has always been the case, only non-Muslims will be given citizenship because they are genuine refugees. Muslims from Islamic Republics are economic migrants and will not be eligible. The Supreme Court will confirm that the Govt. has acted constitutionally. The Shaheen Bagh protestors were demanding something wholly unconstitutional. Now, because of the coronavirus pandemic, they have been dispersed. But the outcome would be the same if they, like the Greenham Common women, continued to squat at Shaheen Bagh for another nine years.

Worst Aeon article ever?

Aeon has an article by an anthropologist, Dr. Sam Dubal, who worked for a year with former fighters in the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in northern Uganda. 

He writes-

The experience compelled me to spend a lot of time thinking about humanity as a philosophical idea. The LRA is a group of people whose humanity has often been questioned, and sometimes denied. A rebel group fighting a spiritual rebellion since 1986, the LRA have waged war in ways that others see as horrific, brutal or otherwise outside the pale of the human – forcibly conscribing their soldiers; ‘sexually enslaving’ young girls; hacking or beating to death government collaborators and disobedient soldiers; and living like animals for years in the wilderness.

His conclusion is-

The legacies of racism and colonialism pressure us to resist ascribing animality to a violent African group living in the wilderness, and to instinctually reclaim their humanity as a way of resisting their barbarisation.

In other words, it's so not cool to call black people monkeys or to offer them a banana. On the other hand you should definitely offer this Indian firewater, the more of it the better.

But to recast LRA rebels as humans denies the ways in which they transcended the human, taking on the feared traits of wild predators while also living alongside and with the supernatural powers of holy spirits.

It is sensible to deny something that is egregiously false.  The human can't be transcended by human beings. It isn't really true that if you sacrifice a sufficient number of virgins to Hecate that you will gain supernatural powers. Also, Transcendental Meditation doesn't really work. You won't actually be able to levitate after paying a lot of money to take the course. 'Yogic flying' won't bring peace to the world. The thing is a con. Joseph Kony may be genuinely mentally ill. But other leaders have used child soldiers to terrorize the settled population and to make money for themselves.

As gorillas, they were fierce and respected soldier-animals, using the crafty tactics of wise apes to avoid capture by enemy soldiers.

This is false. They used the 'crafty tactics' of human beings. I suppose S.A.S commandos and other Special Forces trained in Jungle Warfare do the same. In battle, they make mincemeat out of these 'gorillas'.

As holy warriors, they carried out God’s will while maintaining virtuous lives free of alcohol, adultery and other perceived social ills.

Does this guy really believe this shit? It isn't even 'emic' coz the vast majority of Acholis think these guys were shitheads doing stupid shite.

Here, we might cautiously agree with civilians that rebels were no longer human – but not because, as civilians thought, they had fallen out of the sacred condition of humanity into a depraved state of animality.

Why might we do anything so stupid? What would be the point? Humans are humans. Do a DNA test if you aren't sure. It is merely a metaphor, a figure of speech, to speak of some people as beasts or devils or angels or sweety-pies. Why take a metaphor for a concrete fact and build another metaphor on top of it? Why say Humanity is a rung upon a ladder. One can slip down from it to a depraved state of animality. One can rise up, by some transcendent act, to a level where one works God's will. This is a meta-metaphor which may have some imperative or rhetorical force. But it isn't true. 

Rather, they had transcended humanity to reach extraordinary animal and divine forms of being.

No they haven't.

Their humanity does not need to be saved; it is a limiting condition they meaningfully surpassed.

They may need to be re-educated to behave in a humane way. They will find themselves better off if they do so. Also, they may have their heads bashed in if they don't. Don't forget the LRA was set up after Museveni's  NRA had used brutal methods against the Acholis. But Museveni too was reacting to atrocities. It was Idi Amin, whom the British used to get rid of Obote, who set off this cycle of violence in a beautiful and agriculturally rich region.

There are lessons we can take from the LRA. The next time we decry the imprisonment of Latinx kids at the border without adequate space, food or healthcare as dehumanising, or attempt to defend their humanity, let us remember not only what humanity recognises but also what it erases or obscures. That is, let’s remember why they are there in the first place – even when we are not. If humanity were in fact an adequate barometer of morality, ‘humane’ treatment might consist less of baths and edible food and more of large-scale reparative justice for more than a century of anti-democratic US foreign policy interference in Central American political economy.

There is a good reason to decry 'the imprisonment of Latinx kids'. We should be educating them and then making money off their labor so as to be able to retire in comfort. It doesn't matter which side of the border they are on. What matters is that they are in the pipeline of School to College to Working Their Asses off and raising families so that everybody is better off. Nobody gains from incarcerating these kids.

When we decry the conditions of children held in cages as dehumanising, are we not replicating a form of thinking that treats them like abused animals – where being ‘humane’ means not letting them sit in their own urine or be infested with lice?

Humans are valuable coz they can make cool stuff or provide useful services. We may kill or incarcerate people who are a threat. But, unless that is the case, we shouldn't be wasting money putting kids in cages.

To ask that migrants be treated humanely is to claim some very basic forms of equal treatment – access to toothpaste, diapers and medical care, for example.

It is better to treat migrants as a factor of production. It is pointless to treat them as having rights for which there exists no incentive compatible remedy, under a bond of law, customary or otherwise. There is asymmetry of information between poor migrants and the Governments of target countries. The latter should use appropriate signalling and screening mechanisms to ensure that no 'tragedy of the commons' type situation arises. Hypocrisy is positively mischievous in this regard. Merkel played the saint, saying 'come one come all', but promptly closed the borders causing much more, not less, misery to desperate people. They learnt their lesson. Last month, when Erdogan- as a negotiating tactic- swore to let refugees swarm into Europe, his goons had to force refugees onto buses to take them to the Greek border.

The problem with virtue signalling by academics and clerics and so forth is that politicians feel obliged to jump on the bandwagon. Thus people get fooled that a genuine entitlement exists which will be honoured come rain or shine. When Bernie Madoff does this and those who trust him +end up ruined, we say the guy was a crook running a Ponzi scheme. Madoff goes to jail. But when politicians do the same thing and the State reneges on the commitments they had so airily made, nobody goes to jail. The State has sovereign immunity. Savers & Pensioners may end up taking a haircut, kids may end up in rundown schools, Government Hospitals may turn to shit, unwinnable wars may break out- life for almost everybody can turn to shit just because a bunch of wankers wanted to shit higher than their arseholes and talk earnestly of universal Human Rights and Social Justice and the fight against Fascism.

It is silly to pretend that there will be 'equal treatment' for people who haven't paid into a social insurance scheme and those who haven't. The thing isn't incentive compatible. In the short run, the pretence can be maintained. Middle to long term, its biggest victims are those most vulnerable.

While necessary, these are hardly sufficient to achieve the good – namely, the kinds of justice due after years of imperial, racist, capitalist exploitation that created the violent conditions under which they became migrants.

I suppose there are campuses where 'social justice'- i.e. worthless degrees in worthless Subjects for those with historical grievances, bogus or otherwise- can find a 'safe space'. But taking, or even giving, such courses leads to lower life time earnings. At the margin, it makes you unemployable and stupider than you were born to be.

At the same time, we should be wary of using humanity to positively equate or compare Latinx kids in cages with their white, middle-class American age-equivalents. These caged kids are not also human; they are extraordinary beings, superhumans, having made incredible, dangerous journeys across lands to escape from the ugly margins of capitalism and empire that made them who they are (and killed many of their peers). Whatever commonalities might exist, unequal structural forces have shaped them into radically different and incommensurable forms of existence.

In which case, Americans shouldn't let these super-human kids in because they will eat the domestic variety's lunch.

They should be respected and recognised, rather than flattened by providing the deceptive material trappings of a basic humanity. Just as a bar of soap or a flu shot does not give them justice, neither does asserting their essential sameness to rich age-mates growing up in the heart of global empire.

We may respect and recognize man-eating piranha fish, but we don't want to introduce them into our baths.

Humanity’s abstract universality aims to help us connect to people in very different circumstances, but at the expense of encouraging us to wrongly think of ourselves as like them.

The 'abstract universality' of anything at all may aim at whatever it likes. But, it accomplishes nothing. Similarly, the 'concrete particularism' of some shite or the other is equally useless. On the other hand the socioproctological ditopology of the Nicaraguan horcrux of my neighbor's cat with respect to Humanity's Abstract Universalism under the rubric of a critical ontology of the concreteness of the particular aims at making myself a nice cuppa tea and maybe raiding the cupboard for a couple of chocolate biscuits. 

At the same time, humanity claims to reach for the good of universal justice, when in reality its claims are shaped by particular Western ideas about justice that have historically oppressed rather than emancipated non-Western others.

Eurocentric much? Humanity does not have any claims shaped by Western ideas about Justice coz, like Eastern ideas about Justice, they are completely shit.

It might be time to give up on humanity as a byword for emancipation or liberation, and instead call more precisely on what we often ask for in the name of humanity: justice and recognition for those constructed in and deeply marginalised by past and present structures of imperialism, racism, colonialism and capitalism.

But nothing and no one has ever been constructed by some verbose shite. This stupid fucker thinks Imperialism is still around. He thinks some countries are colonizing others. Fuck is wrong with him? How stupid and ignorant do you have to be to get a Doctorate in Anthropology?