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Gandhian lamb chops

Customer reviews of Mahatma Gandhi

Date	Quality Service Value	Comment

Mon 27 Feb

Quality was rated 3 out of 5 Service was rated 5 out of 5 Value was rated 4 out of 5

Flavours and most items were fine but I could have mended boots with the lamb - I have never had such tough meat. Keith, IG6

I was puzzled by this comment, made by Keith of Ilford, regarding Mahatma Gandhi- 'I could have mended boots with the lamb. I have never had such tough meat.' 
Surely Mahatma Gandhi, as a sort of Holy Cow, should be regarded as beef, not lamb? 
True, he drank goat's milk and thus might count as mutton but why refer to his flesh as lamb rather than chicken? 
The answer to my conundrum, as so happens on these occasions, was easily supplied by Google.

 Both Pandit Nehru and Moulana Azad were meat eaters and smokers, and whenever they went together to Gandhi's Ashram, Gandhi asked his wife, Kasturbai, to cook lamb chops because Moulana was very fond of them. She hated doing so because she was a strict vegetarian, but Gandhi told her, 'If you do not cook lamb chops for Maulana you will be doing him violence because he likes it.' But Nehru was expected to eat only vegetarian food. So you had Maulana and Nehru sitting next to each other, with Maulana eating his lamb chops and Nehru salivating at the thought but not getting any himself. Similarly Nehru would never smoke in Gandhi's presence, whereas Maulana would light up a cigar, apparently unaware of the fact that this irritated the old man's throat. Never once did Gandhi protest or ask Maulana to desist as he felt that to do so would be an act of violence.
(Lord Bhikhu Parekh is the source)
Ever since Kasturba died, however, it appears Mahatma Gandhi has had to cook the lamb himself and the results have not pleased Mr. Keith of Ilford. Personally, I blame David Cameron. I've said it before and I'll say it again. That boy aint right. 

A Diophantine Dionysios.

extracted from 'In search of Riemann zeroes'  here

The following is extracted from Steve Landsburg's lyrical appreciation of Weil's achievement-

'The essence of Weil's great vision was that Diophantine problems, although they appear to concern only the ancient subject of pure arithmetic, are inextricably linked to problems in geometry and topology, many of which can be stated only in the language of twentieth century mathematics. High school seniors know that the germ of this idea goes back to Fermat's contemporary Descartes, who discovered that by "graphing'', you can translate equations into geometry. But that translation is too crude to tell you very much about Diophantine questions. You can plot a curve that represents all the solutions to an equation like x⁵- y³=31, but no matter how long you stare, you'll never be able to discern which points on that curve represent whole number solutions. (One solution is x=2 and y=1. How can you tell whether this is the only whole number solution? Or one of many? Or one of an infinitude?)

So it's natural to guess that if you're interested in whole numbers, geometry won't be much help. But thanks largely to Weil (and others including L.J. Mordell and Carl Ludwig Siegel), we now know that guess to be the exact opposite of the truth. Weil was able to prove that the geometric structure of a curve conveys---in ways that are highly subtle and not at all obvious---information about the arithmetic of the associated equation. From there, he articulated a grand vision of how arithmetic and geometry should be linked in far more general circumstances. This grand vision---which became known as the "Weil conjectures''---was formulated in 1948 and soon became the Holy Grail of algebraic geometry. Throughout the 1960's, a team comprising several of the world's very best mathematicians, and led by the charismatic and indefatigable Alexandre Grothendieck, developed the machinery that made it possible, in 1973, for Pierre Deligne to prove the Weil conjectures and justify the audacious courage that had allowed Weil to suggest that such an extraordinary set of statements might actually be true.

Nowadays, it would be unthinkable to work on problems in arithmetic without exploiting the power of geometry. To a large extent, it was Weil's prescience that made this development inevitable.

But that gets slightly ahead of the story. Before you can apply geometry to arithmetic, you need proper foundations for geometry. When Weil was doing his most important work in the 1940's, those foundations did not exist. For several decades, algebraic geometry had been dominated by the traditions of the "Italian school''---traditions which included a somewhat breezy attitude toward the details of proofs. There was a vast literature full of beautiful results, but it had become essentially impossible to tell which had been proven true and which had only been proven plausible. 

The only remedy was to rebuild algebraic geometry from the ground up. Weil felt a particular urgency about this, because he needed a rigorous version of geometry to continue his work in arithmetic. This inspired him to write what he called "the indispensable key to my later work'', his book onFoundations of Algebraic Geometry. With the appearance of this book in 1946, the methods of the Italians were finally legitimized. In the process, Weil had to introduce new ideas and a new language, but characteristically he emphasized the continuity between his own work and the masters of the past. "Nor should one forget'', he wrote, "when discussing such subjects as algebraic geometry and in particular the work of the Italian school, that the so-called `intuition' of earlier mathematicians, reckless as their use of it may sometimes appear to us, often rested on a most painstaking study of numerous special examples, from which they gained an insight not always found among modern exponents of the axiomatic creed...Our wish and aim must be to return at the earliest possible moment to the palaces which are ours by birthright, to consolidate shaky foundations, to provide roofs where they are missing, to finish, in harmony with the portions already existing, what has been left undone.'' 

Within a few decades, Weil's rebuilt palaces were no longer the foundation of geometry, but the foundation of the foundation. In the 1960's, Grothendieck and his school used the palaces themselves as the groundwork for fantastic modern skyscrapers, reworking every assumption and expanding the realm of geometry to unimaginable heights. From these heights the Weil conjectures were eventually conquered. Grothendieck's project was one of the most remarkable episodes in the history of mathematics. Weil's conjectures made that project necessary, and Weil's foundations made it possible. If Weil had never lived, I cannot imagine what modern geometry would even be about.

The Bhagvad Gita, as I argue in my book Ghalib, Gandhi & the Gita, is the dual of the education in Game Theory of the Just King.
What happens is this. First the Just King experiences 'Vishada' (Depression) being perplexed by the question of what is the duty owed to dependants and Agents. This is answered by
1) the Vyadha Gita episode
2)  the story of Nala- who learns probability and Game theory so as to defeat Kala (Time in its degenerate aspect)
From the latter, it is clear that the Just King learns a sort of autistic discrete maths which, because it can solve any Diophantine question, is also an infinite axiom set theory.

But an infinite deontics is a bad or backward induction based decision tree. Cut it down, says Krishna, because this upside down tree, whose roots are in Heaven and hymn leaved branches down below, is nothing but- like the reflection of a tree in water- the dual of the tree of Manyu, dark anger, in whose shade nothing can grow.
Meanwhile, Krishna's own dual- Balram, Halayuddha (he whose weapon is the plough) has quit the killing field of Kurukshetra for a big pot of wine under the shade of a tree which is just a tree while his beloved Revaki's eyes- which are the colour of amethysts- amethysts being a sovereign defence against getting totally plastered- scintillate from the shadows.
Non-violence is all very good and well, so long as it leads to conquests like that of India by the Wine God of the Greeks who was armed only with lute, lyre and a retinue of loose women.
True, the deontics of our Diophantine Dionysios, too, is infinite but its about the arithmetic of quaffing cups and claiming kisses, so its capacity for public mischief is disabled in advance.

Draupadi's marriage counsellor

Draupadi- ' I told him to bring some dhania, ten times I said 'bring dhania' and guess what?
Marriage Counsellor- 'I know, I know, he brought you the head of a demon instead. You talked of nothing else during our last session'
Draupadi- 'That was another husband. This one went and brought back the head of an ogre. All I wanted was some dhania.'
Marriage Counsellor- 'and how did that make you feel'
Draupadi- 'Angry. Really really angry'
Marriage Counsellor- Your wife is expressing feelings of anger. Why do you think that is?
Arjuna- She wants me to bring home the head of a demon rather than an ogre?
Marriage Counsellor- No, she wants you to go to Kurukshetra and kill your cousins. What? Do I have to recite to you the entire Bhagvad Gita all over again?
Arjuna- How's about I just go to the Bania and buy her some dhania?
Marriage Counsellor- Just fucking kill your cousins already! What's wrong with you? Grow a pair you big girl's blouse.
Draupadi- You are the most worthless Marriage Counsellor ever. If it weren't for your 5 for the price of 1 deal on husbands, we'd never have come to you.
Marriage Counsellor- Yes, well, I was actually hoping to rope in Rahul Gandhi.

Rancour against Ricoeur

'Ricoeur extends his account of freedom in Fallible Man and The Symbolism of Evil, both published in 1960. In these works he addresses the question of how to account for the fact that it is possible for us to misuse our freedom, to have a bad will. In Fallible Man he argues that this possibility is grounded in a basic disproportion that characterizes the finite and the infinite dimensions of a human being. This disproportion is epitomized by the gap between bios, or one's spatiotemporally located life, and the logos, one's use of reason that can grasp universals. This disproportion shows up in every aspect of human existence. It is manifest in perception, in thought and speech, in evaluation, and in action. By reason of this disproportion, we are never wholly at one with ourselves and hence we can go wrong. We are fallible, yet evil, the misuse of our freedom, is not therefore original or necessary.

Nor does this disproportion render our existence meaningless. Rather, the very disproportion that makes us fallible and makes human evil possible is also what makes goodness, knowledge, and achievement possible. It is what distinguishes us from one another—each one of us has his or her unique spatiotemporal location—and at the same time makes it possible for us to communicate with each other, through the logos that intends to transcend such localized points of view.

Though the unity of humanity is never more than a unity founded on communication, precisely because we can communicate, the differences among us are never absolute. Furthermore, no one of us alone could be a person. Though each of us has an individual identity, our identities show that we are bound up with others: “Man is this plural and collective unity in which the unity of destination and the differences of destinies are to be understood through each other” (Fallible Man, 138).'

'Ricoeur's initial conception of the disproportion that characterizes human beings was, he came to conclude, insufficient to account for occurrences of an actual bad will and evil deeds. No direct, unmediated inspection of the cogito, as Descartes and Husserl had proposed, could show why these evils, contingent as each of them is, in fact came to be. Recognizing the opacity of the cogito in this respect confirmed his suspicion that all self-understanding comes about only through “signs deposited in memory and imagination by the great literary traditions” (Ricoeur, “Intellectual Autobiography,” in Hahn, 1995, 16). This suspicion was a major motivator for his hermeneutic and, at the same time, “linguistic turn.”
Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.
 Why would an animal, subject to evolutionary pressure and for whom cognition is costly in terms of calories consumed, want to have something Ricouer would recognize as a 'good will'? The theological answer, grounded in some sort of Occasionalism, is that thinking good thoughts and having a good Will and regularly denouncing evil coz evil is real bad, okay, and abstaining from some inexpressible and inexpiable Sin against the Holy Ghost or Goat or whatever is really really important coz God's into that shite big time and he sure will fuck you up if you don't toe the line.
Ricouer, on the other hand, probably thought that shite Philosophers write somehow enables or defends against Hitlerism or summat. But, that's fucked in the head. What enabled Hitler was the stupidity of the Political Wing of the German Army freed from having to ponce around in tu tus for the pleasure of Prussian King. Without a King to keep them in line- or Eulenberg to kiss away Moltke's sulks- the Generals naturally got round to fucking Civil Society, rather than each other, in the ass. They still wouldn't have been able to fuck Europe in the ass if the other European countries had trusted to Game Theory of the Rand Corp type rather than pious pi-jaw and Popular Fronts and other such shite.
Contra Ricoeur, what Language and Philosophy and 'good' or 'bad' Will is about is 'cheap talk' and 'costly signals' in a repeated Game. But, Evolution is a meta-game so what ultimately decides things is Operations Research re. cheaper kill rates and Cryptography and splitting Atoms and so on.

In the aftermath of his “linguistic turn” Ricoeur did not abandon the basic claims of his earlier anthropology. As he had in Freedom and Nature, he continued to reject any form of substance dualism. So no Occassionalism then but also no Phenomenology that is not Epiphenomenology unless it can be shown to be adaptive- i.e. a costly signal or a genetic canalization- rather than just cheap talk or random noise generated for the purpose of a mixed strategy.And as he did in Fallible Man, he continued to emphasize the fragility of the human condition. But this turn led him to make major changes in his accounts of both language and action. On the one hand, he found in his conception of discourse as grounded upon the signs and symbols that make up human culture resources both for framing working hypotheses to make sense of human existence and for testing them. On the other hand, he came to conclude that his earlier work on the will was insufficient to provide the basis for an adequate philosophical anthropology. He had emphasized that the will involved an “internal” project or aim that was basically self-contained. But he came to see that one can only make sense of projects and intentions by understanding them as always connected to events in the world.

But this means, Ricoeur is ruling out the existence of apophatic communal duties and non supervenient interpersonal states. Why should he do this? What argument rules out such things? Consider 'geometrical frustration' where the lowest entropic state can't be reached, or think of concurrency deadlock- do such situations not characterize the interpersonal aspect of lived life? Why should energy expended under such conditions, which require a ditopology to describe, not 'count'?

Properly conceived, action is that which brings projects and worldly events together, for action encompasses not only doing and making but also receiving and enduring. Action includes “saying inasmuch as it is a doing, ordinary action inasmuch as it is an intervention into the course of things, narration inasmuch as it is the narrative reassembling of a life stretched out in time, and finally, the capacity to impute to oneself or to others the responsibility for acting” (“De l'esprit,”Revue Philosophique de Louvain 92 (1994): 248). Hence Ricoeur concludes that his conception of action is similar to Heidegger's conception of care as the fundamental way that persons exist and inhabit the world (Critique and Conviction, 74–75).

But Heide's concept of 'care' was fucked in the head. It aint a good thing if your pi-jaw cashes out as Nazi pi-jaw.

The implications of Ricoeur's investigations of different forms of discourse and action come together in a particularly striking way in his discussion of what he calls the narrative unity of a person's life. Whatever else a narrative recounts, he says, it also recounts care. Indeed, in a sense narrative “only recounts Care. This is why there is nothing absurd in speaking about the narrative unity of a life, under the sign of narratives that teach us how to articulate retrospection and prospection in a narrative way” (Oneself as Another, 163, translation modified).

Construing Heidegger's care in terms of action and thereby finding care-action to be at the heart of every narrative provided Ricoeur with the basic resources for articulating the main themes of his mature anthropology. Among these themes are: (a) discourse and action, (b) selves as agents, (c) the temporality of action, (d) narrativity, identity, and time, (e) memory and history, (f) ethics, and (g) politics. Each of these themes deals with a fundamental feature of the constitutive capabilities of the capable human being.

So, the only interesting thing about philosophy- viz. the potentially adaptive displacement activity occurring under conditions of concurrency deadlock or interpersonal geometrical frustration- is thrown away leaving it gazing mutely at Language coz, for sure, that's not a total fucking wank.

3.1 Discourse and Action

In a seminal essay, “The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text” (From Text to Action, 146–67), Ricoeur's aim is both to set forth the essential constituents of all actions and to show that action is intelligible and the proper object of the social sciences. To do so he builds on his conception of discourse, of language in use.

Language contains within itself resources that allow it to be used creatively. Two important ways in which these resources come to light are (a) in the coining of metaphors and (b) in the fashioning of narratives. In The Rule of Metaphor, Ricoeur argues that is because there is a linguistic productive imagination that generates and regenerates meaning through the power of metaphoricity to state things in new ways. For him, fresh metaphors, metaphors that have not been reduced to the commonplace, reveal a new way of seeing their referents. They creatively transform language. Thus they are not merely rhetorical ornaments. They have genuine cognitive import in their own right and are untranslatable without remainder into literal language. In a similar manner, acts of narrating create new plots and characters, thereby also producing new meanings. Thus to become aware of the metaphorical and narrative resources resident in language is to see that, notwithstanding the many rules and codes that govern language usage, it is always able to be used creatively, to produce new meanings.

But metaphors are fucked coz they give you the illusion of understanding something. That illusion may be all very well if a communal duty is being discharged or a work around for an interpersonal concurrency deadlock is being broached, but metaphoricity is shite thinking and pi-jaw and can easily topple over into meta-metaphoricity- stuff like Gandhian shite, Hitlerian shite etc, etc.

Four features of discourse, as distinct from language as a system, are of central importance for the analogy Ricoeur makes between texts and actions. First, a language system as conceived by structuralists is merely virtual and hence timeless, but discourse always occurs as an actual event at some particular moment of time. Second, a language system is self-contained, but discourse always refers to persons who say or write and hear or read. Third, though a language system is a necessary condition for communication inasmuch as it provides the codes for communication, it itself does not communicate. Only discourse communicates among its interlocutors. And fourth, the signs in a language system refer only to other signs in it, but discourse “refers to a world that it claims to describe, to express, or to represent”(From Text to Action, 145).

The problem with a discourse which occurs in the fucking Lecture Hall is that it aint dialogic, it aint positive- it's credentialist shite is what it is. Fuck we need it for? 

Action is analogous to discourse because, to make full sense of any action, one has to recognize that its meaning is distinguishable from its occurrence as a particular spatiotemporal event. Nevertheless, every genuine action is meaningful only because it is some specific person's doing at some particular moment.

To clarify the analogy further between discourse and action, Ricoeur draws on speech act theory. First, action has the structure of a locutionary act inasmuch as it has a “propositional content” that we can identify and reidentify. For example, we can recognize the activity of putting on clothes or digging in the ground whenever we encounter anyone doing them.

Second, action has “illocutionary” characteristics that closely resemble the speech acts in discourse. Each type of action has constitutive “rules,” rules that make an action a specific type of action. An obvious example of the “illocutionary” character of discourse is found in making promises. Similarly, actions of a certain sort—for example, stepping forward when volunteers are called for—can, in the appropriate context, count as a promise no less than a verbal pledge can.

Though Ricoeur does not explicitly discuss the counterpart in action of the perlocutionary act in discourse, it is easy to infer. Just as we can anticipate how people are likely to react to things that we might say or write, so we can anticipate how they would likely react to what we might do. We know that there are some deeds that people will quite likely put up with and others where they are likely not to do so.

1n '68 the students spoke to Ricoeur. They told him to fuck off. Pi-jaw is no lustration of the Political, Phenomenology was a credentialist Ponzi scheme not a possible basis for 'Social Science'. The students could see that coz the shite their Profs were peddling wasn't fitting them to be productive in the sorts of industries that could deliver stuff they wanted- nice centrally heated homes with indoor plumbing, IKEA furniture, fast food, cars that could get from 0 to 60 in their own life-time- good stuff like that.

It follows from the analogies between discourse and action that all action is in principle interaction, just as all discourse is in principle dialogical.
Suppose we hadn't evolved- Ricoeur would be right. I just smoked a ciggie. The ciggie tried to rewrite my genetic code. Because I'm the product of billions of years of evolution, the ciggie (hopefully) failed. Still, if I smoke enough ciggies, it's gonna happen coz my species only been smoking for a few centuries.  Incidentally, the reason I was smoking was because I'd just killed the real Osama bin Laden. So, if I get cancer off that ciggie I sure will be pissed.
Because of this similarity, action, like discourse, is inherently subject to interpretation and open to extended forms of discourse, including forms of critique. Like discourse, actions are “open worlds” whose meaning, which outlives their initial performance, is not fully determined by their performers and their immediate audiences. As the study of history shows, there are multiple ways that a past action remains open to interpretation. One can reasonably investigate what it meant to those who knew about it when it occurred. But one can also ask how those who came later understood and assessed it, or even what it might mean today or in a possible future.

Furthermore, just as we interpret the whole of a discourse, whether spoken or written, in the light of its several parts and any particular part in the light of the whole, similarly, we interpret a complex of actions—for example, a war—in the light of the particular actions of its participants and vice versa.

All interpretative activity, therefore, proceeds by way of a dialectic between guessing and validating. We make an educated guess about the meaning of a part and check it against the whole and vice versa. In the same way, we begin by guessing about the the meaning of the whole as determining the relative importance of the several parts. Throughout this process of guess and validation, we can come to an end when we say this is how we understand things, but there is no definitive outcome. It is always possible reasonably to relate sentences, or actions, to one another in more than one way. Hence, there is always a possible plurality and even a conflict of interpretations that must be negotiated in making sense of human discourse and action.

To validate an interpretation is not simply to verify it empirically. We validate an interpretation by vindicating it against competing interpretations. Thus validation “is an argumentative discipline more comparable to the judicial procedures of legal interpretation. It is a logic of uncertainty and qualitative probability” (From Text to Action, 159).

Despite the conflict of interpretations, we can find criteria, such as comprehensiveness, for determining which interpretation is more likely. Sometimes, though, more than one interpretation will satisfy the criteria equally well. Still some interpretations have little or no likelihood. Hence:

If it is true that there is always more than one way of construing a text, it is not true that all interpretations are equal.… The text is a limited field of possible constructions. The logic of validation allows us to move between the two limits of dogmatism and skepticism. It is always possible to argue against an interpretation, to confront interpretations, to arbitrate between them and to seek for an agreement, even if this agreement remains beyond our reach. (From Text to Action, 160)

What holds good for the interpretation of discourse holds as well for the interpretation of action.

Each discourse and action is, of course, an event that occurs at a particular place and time. Accordingly, besides interpreting it, we ought also to seek for a causal explanation of its occurrence. Only an account that provides both a causal explanation and an interpretation of its meaning that enjoys probability will do justice to the action or discourse.

Ricoeur finds in his reflections on discourse and action a capital lesson about the world and the persons or selves that inhabit it. Selves as agents are, to be sure, entities in the world. But they are fundamentally different from all other worldly entities in that they create things whose meaning needs to be interpreted.

3.2 Selves as Agents

Ricoeur's conception of the self stands opposed to both the Cartesian and the radical anti-Cartesian conceptions. On the Cartesian conception of the cogito, the ego is supposedly independent of its body and the body's spatiotemporal setting. It is immediately, transparently aware of itself. On the radical anti-Cartesian conception, the so-called self is nothing other than the product or function of some basically impersonal system, be it the unconscious, the will to power, or the forces of economic production. For Ricoeur, the self is essentially embodied. It is, on the one hand, both made possible and constituted by its material and cultural situation. But, on the other hand, it is in principle always capable of initiative, of inaugurating something new. More importantly, the self is what answers the question “Who?”: Who spoke, who did this, who said this, who is this? As such it has a personal identity and is open to different descriptions.

The kind of identity that the Ricoeurian self has is not like that of the nonpersonal entities that perdure simply as in some significant sense “selfsame.” Rather, the self's identity is constituted by an inextricable tie between such selfsameness and a self-constancy that maintians its identity through change over time. Following the distinction in Latin between idem andipse, Ricoeur holds that the self's idem-identity is that which gives the self, among other things, its spatio-temporal sameness. Its ipse-identity is what accounts for its unique ability to initiate something new and imputable to a self, be it oneself or another, as agent. Without both sorts of identity there is no self. Because a self has both an idem-identity and anipse-identity, it inhabits two irreducible orders of causality, namely, the physical and the intentional orders. A comprehensive account of any genuine action must express the way it is related to both of these orders.

The evidence that Ricoeur cites to support the claim that the self inhabits two orders of causality comes not from empirical verification but from attestation. Attestation is the sort of lived assurance or confidence that each person has of existing in both of these orders of causality. This assurance is a kind of belief but one based on credence or trust rather than a logical certitude. It is the confidence that the self has in its ability to act and to suffer, to do and undergo things that it can impute to itself as its own doings and sufferings. The evidential validity of attestation as distinct from verification is crucial for Ricoeur's entire anthropology. Without it, he would have no basis for insisting, with Kant, that persons are irreducibly different from things.

Interpretation and Attestation. We all do both all the time, they are two sides of the same coin, but neither has any importance save in so far as we are systematically maximising the joint irony of our error in either. 

Essentially concurrency deadlock and geometrical frustration and so on are adaptive because inertia is adaptive and Phenomenology, so long as it is yoked with its dual, viz. Occassionalism, is important in capturing the over-riding feature of our lived life as failures because the good news is we die and so, unless God blighted us with success, that which is dilatory is also the aleatory golden path which at last divorces us from Language's Eurydice. Thus, luckier than Orpheus, we gain the stellar spate of Suka.

Sita & gita

Time endures as deadlocked lustration 

Space strobes as entropic frustration

Its own epoché, not Rk raptures Gita
 Tho' her own N.G.O, I know, captures Sita.

Why I don't eat beef.

I am often asked why, though admitting that beef eating is part of Brahminhood, according to Veda, I myself don't partake of cow flesh.

The answer is since I took the milk of the cow, it is my mother. Will I eat the flesh of my own mother?
I still recall how the milk-man used to come to extract milk from my mother's breasts but she would beat him and chase him away. He said 'Mataji, please don't beat me. Your son takes milk from my cow. He considers the cow his mother. Since I am extracting milk from the udders of my cow so as to provide your son with milk, I thought I should come and offer you the same service since you too are equally his mother.'
My mother replied 'My son is 49 years old. He has only recently become a Hindutva blogger. Kindly find someone else to follow on Twitter.'

Anyway, that's why I don't eat beef but devour it simply.

Other Hindutva bloggers had mothers quite different to mine. They were quite happy to be milked while mooing loudly and eating grass. Meanwhile, patriotic and religiously minded cows would come quietly to their babies' cribs, pick them up with dainty hoofs and attach them to their brimming udders.

Nitin Gadkare also does this, not because he now thinks he is a cow but just as part of his weight-loss strategy.

                                           mothers of hindutva bloggers eating grass and mooing

                                               Gadkare Sahib giving milk to a baby faced Lalu

Gandhi vs Ambedkar.

 ' But in their one-upmanship battle as to who could speak for Depressed Classes with authority, Ambedkar held the trump card for he himself was an Untouchable. Gandhi admitted that he had at first taken Ambedkar to be a Brahmin obsessed with helping the Untouchables. It was not until their clash in London that Gandhi realized that Ambedkar was an Untouchable—which says much about Gandhi’s stereotype of Untouchables as the “dumb millions” that he and Congress maintained they represented (Writings 2:660).'
All quotations are from Harold Coward 'Indian critiques of Gandhi'
  Gandhi and Ambedkar had previously co-operated because they had completely misunderstood each other. Ambedkar thought Gandhi was a good man who wanted to remove Untouchability because, more than a crime, it was a piece of National folly. Gandhi approved of Ambedkar because he thought the young chap was a Maharashtrian Brahmin. (Ambedkar's school teacher had given his young prodigy of a pupil his own surname as a mark of distinction)- probably Chitpavan and hence Manly. But Gandhi believed he was more Truly Manly than everybody else so he naturally got riled when Ambedkar started talking law and ethics and so on for no good reason other than the uplifting of the oppressed classes. How dare this young fellow wag his tail like this? What for this Brahmin is getting so heated over some damn untouchables? Just showing off his machismo isn't it? So Gandhi had to cut the fellow down to size.
Anyway, turned out the chap wasn't a Brahmin at all but a pariah of some sort- like that Sri Narayana Guru down Vaikom way. Just because these chaps know Sanskrit or have PhD from Columbia or LSE or whatever, they forget their karma caused them to be the 'younger brothers' of us caste Hindus.  Anyway, now I've invented a new name for the achooths. Let them be called Harijan. Since it is a name I have coined and I am the only one who understands Bhagvad Gita, though I don't know Sanskrit and Mimamsa and all that rot, still it is clear that I am the voice of Hari and thus they are my children and must listen to me and buy my worthless magazine which I have called 'Harijan'.
Since Ambedkar won't call himself a Harijan he can't represent them. They are my monopoly. Let Ambedkar whine to his heart's content that I am paying High Caste lawyers to sit around doing nothing out of funds  ostensibly collected for the up-liftment of his caste-fellows. This is how the world works. Why do people call me anti-modern and medieval in my thinking? What could be more modern and avant la lettre than the Gandhian prior to the current epidemic of holier-than-thou Anti Poverty parasites and plague of Eco-Feminists?

The British at this time, or a little earlier, had granted full universal suffrage with strong minority protection to Sri Lanka, thanks to Sidney Webb. They gave limited franchise with separate electorates for Muslims, Sikhs and Untouchables to India. Had Gandhi let this stand, then Muslim fears, especially in the United Provinces, would have been allayed. The road to Partition would have been closed. Why? The numerical preponderance of the Hindus would have ceased to be a cause of anxiety.
The British were right. Minorities need to be protected. It was only when Sri Lanka jettisoned those constitutional protections that it became prey to the evils of civil war and insurrectionary politics. Gandhi, however, only had importance as a bridge between communities at daggers drawn with each other. His stock in trade was
1) to champion Hindu-Muslim unity while doing everything in his power to put the two creeds at loggerheads thus making himself an 'obligatory passage point'.
2) to take money from the Mill owners while pretending to protect the handloom weavers from competition with the machine by generously supplying them with hand-spun cotton yarn- though what his acolytes produced was not fit for purpose.
3) to be a sort of High Caste Pundit, though completely ignorant (his defeat at the hands of the Vaikom Pundits was a foregone conclusion. The man knew no Sanskrit, no Nyaya, no Mimamsa and had zero common-sense) on the basis of a fraudulent service to the  Hindu Religion by keeping the Untouchables within the fold and in a submissive posture.
The Poona pact with Ambedkar, on the face of it, looks generous- it doubled representation for the oppressed class but, since members were returned on the general ballot, it meant Congress Uncle Toms would capture those seats and thus the Muslim League's position had become more rather than less precarious. This fact was underlined by Congress failing to pass Untouchability Abolition Acts when they could easily have done so. Ambedkar, now known to be an 'achooth' himself, soon saw through 'Gandhi-giri' but here too, as with Khilafat, Gandhi had managed to turn Untouchability into a weapon to destroy Hindu Muslim Unity. The Harijan Sevak Sangh, dominated by High Caste fuckwits, wanted to turn the 'bhangi' (night soil carrier) into a vegetarian, teetotaller, so as to make his service that much more pleasing and hygienic to his patrons. This was Congress's plan for the 'Untouchables', towards whom they claimed to feel great penitence. What did they have in mind for the meat-eating Muslims towards whom they felt not penitence but rancour? No doubt, there was some dangerous or dirty job these Banias and Brahmins already have in mind for us but why wait for Bania Raj to find out what that might be?

There was an easy way to destroy the caste system- embrace meat eating, wine drinking and grant legitimacy to children of pratiloma or other types of Union. The Japanese abolished the ban on the flesh of four legged animals, including cows, and equalized the position of merchants and samurai. Hedonism worked as a great leveller. So did conscription. Gandhian austerity operated in a manner precisely the reverse. It was a Bania hypocrisy, ignorance and stupidity writ large, nothing more.
 “One born a scavenger must earn his livelihood by being a scavenger, and then do whatever else he likes. For a scavenger is as worthy of his hire as a lawyer or your President.”
But, this was precisely the argument of the Vaikom pundits who had defeated Gandhi in debate ten years previously. They had been born as upholders of Untouchability. That is how they earned their livelihood. They and others like them had put up a Case, decided in their favour, to the High Court by which the road to the temple was declared a private, rather than public thoroughfare and thus exempt from an older law. Why did they do this? It was a hereditary duty incumbent upon them by reason of their livelihood. In private life they might drink with or have sexual relations with people of the oppressed class but that was a different matter. Now, if threatened with a beating or a fine, it would be perfectly proper for them to desist from discrimination because that duty was defeasible by reason of exigent circumstances. In other words, it was a duty which only became binding if it could be carried out with perfect safety from harm or opprobrium.
  When Rajaji was seeking to implement Temple Entry, he found that the Priests wanted Legislation to enforce it because otherwise they faced costly court cases for delinquency to duty. If Gandhi was ignorant of this aspect of the matter- and Gandhi was a deeply ignorant man- he nevertheless does not escape censure. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, at least for a lawyer. Ignorance of Indian conditions is no excuse if you claim to lead the Indian people.
I once read somewhere that Sankaracharya taught cows to chant the Vedas as a way to rebuke the arrogance of the ritualists. What about Gandhi?

'When Ambedkar indicated that he and the Untouchables should find another religion and leave the Hindu fold, Gandhi was shocked to see Christians, Muslims, and Sikhs vying with each other to convert  untouchables. In a conversation with the Christian leader John Mott, Gandhi said that such activities hurt him and were an ugly travesty of religion (CW 64:35). Aside from it being an unseemly competition, said Mott, should Christians not preach the gospel to Untouchables who were thinking of leaving Hinduism? Gandhi’s response did not endear him to the Untouchables: “Would you preach the gospel to a cow? Well, some of the untouchables are worse than cows in understanding . . . they can no more distinguish between the relative merits of Islam and Hinduism and Christianity than a cow” (CW 64:37)


Gandhi's greatest victory- perhaps his only one-against the forces of reform came towards the end of his life when he persuaded Congress to give Ambedkar a Ministerial berth. According to Gandhian thinking, Ambedkar would be utterly annihilated as a rational and moral being, the moment he planted his bottom on a Ministerial 'kursi'. But Gandhi miscalculated. Ambedkar had aptness, not appetency, for high office. If his only service was as a draughtsman of the Constitution, he would still stand head and shoulders above all his contemporaries. However, yet greater heights remained for him to scale. History will remember him as a Boddhisattva.

Does Hinduism promote Corruption?

Three students, all of Hindu heritage, at an American Business College think Indian corruption is at least partly attributable to something intrinsic to Hindu culture.

'Furthermore, Indian literary history fully embraces the concept of noble ends justifying dubious means. Three texts intrinsic to Indian culture and philosophy help to explain the current business landscape: the epics Ramayana and Mahabarata and the economic treatise Arthshastra.

'In both the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, even gods resort to deceit and trickery to accomplish their ends. In the latter, Lord Krishna repeatedly devises "underhanded" methods to defeat the opposing army -- going so far as to encourage the protagonist, Arjuna, to attack and kill an unarmed adversary.

'In addition, the Arthshastra is often cited publicly by prominent politicians and businessmen as the foundation of their strategic thought. Written to advise a king on statecraft, economic policy and military strategy, the work advocates the use of deception and sometimes brutal measures for the common good. Max Weber described Machiavelli's draconian Prince as harmless when compared to Arthshastra, whose topics range from "when a nation should violate a treaty and invade" to "when killing domestic opponents is wise."

Before condemning these young students for not understanding the texts they mention, one must in fairness grant that they have indeed accurately portrayed the conventional wisdom regarding the Hindu epics as taught by leading American professors. Since these students are studying in America, it is perfectly proper for them to reflect what is taught there- they have gone to America to learn, not to teach.

It may well be that, if these students previously studied in India, they are also reflecting the conventional wisdom amongst high ranking Academics at leading Universities back home.

As students and young people, they can scarcely be blamed for parroting views held by the sort of people who grade their papers and determine their success in the corrupt Credentialist fraud that is Higher Education.

What the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, Arthashastra, Manu Smriti and so on have in common is that they teach that the path of absolute ethical Autonomy is highest of all and that no force, not even that of the Heavenly Gods (whose existence is part of Maya- Illusion- merely), can prevail against it. Corruption, Mendacity and Violence offer no advantage and pose no threat to an individual or collective which has chosen the highest goal and which has its feet firmly planted upon the path to it.

The Vyadha Gita shows how a merchant- in a trade that is a byword for fraud- gains prosperity, by pure means alone, while remaining firmly fixed in absolute Autonomy that is also Union with the Highest. His business dealings are pure, so he gains wealth. He reveres his own parents as Gods and thus is free from the pious frauds of priestcraft. He has no fear of Death, having gained the honeyed wisdom of the Chandogya Unpanishad. He is free and neither corrupts not is corrupted. 

Vegetarian nutjobs will say- 'but, he is a butcher! Chee chee!' The reason they will say this is because they are so full of shit their mouth has to take on some of the work of their arsehole.

Eating meat, including beef, is perfectly compatible with Hinduism as is brewing beer of distilling spirits.

The students use the term 'ethical equilibria'- which suggests some sort of Peyton Young type co-operative game theoretic dimension to their analysis. The point about co-operative games is that, as agents learn that the strategy of their counterpart is not of a myopic Hobbesian kind, their own behaviour changes such that suddenly it as though something we would call altruism, or ethics, or even aesthetics, is being collectively maximized.

The Mahabharata shows the futility of war but also points to the glorious fate of the one son of Vyasa who was free of the tri-gunas- Suka, who flies by the nets of illusion and gains the highest Union leaving his father behind, though yet at the morning of the world, cheerless and bereft.

The Ramayana shows that emotions as 'Darwinian algorithms of the mind' and Ethics as 'Customary Morality' are dangerously counter-productive whereas their true end is more perfectly realized along the path to the highest goal.

The Arthashastra, like Manusmriti, says the path of pure Spiritual Autonomy is highest. It is beyond the scope of Politics and Economics. There is some special pleading for existing 'kutniti' expedients, on some spurious grounds. For this reason both texts are rejected by the Saints. They have nothing to do with the living and immortal Religion though, because of a historicist judicial hermeneutics adopted by the East India Company, in English and English alone, these texts have acquired a sort of normative value. Incidentally, the Arthashastra was only rediscovered in the early years of the last century. 

I find no fault with the three students. But, I ask the question, how long can India survive if a false hermeneutic of Colonial manufacture continues to enjoy normative status in the English speaking Academy? 

It is useless to say kids will learn the true Hinduism at grandma's knee. Chances are, for these 3 students, their grannies were History Professors at JNU or something equally vile.

revitalizing micro-finance

Beggars. Redefine Beggars as Microfinance clients and the pennies they get as loans at 18%. Securitize their debt and get Vinod Khosla to invest. What? It could work.
Tomorrow, thieves.

Gandhian solution to the Babri Masjid dilemma

What do you think must be done at the site of demolished Babri Masjid?

The status quo should be preserved. The debris, the rubble, representing the hardness of our hearts and the shallowness of our minds, is more sacred as a confession of our unregenerateness than an aggressive, avenging, construction of a Ram temple at the site can ever be. Or a legalistic reconstruction of the demolished mosque.

At the deepest level, no new Rama temple can in all conscience be constructed at the site until the questions of Sita’s banishment and the killing of Shudraka by Rama in the Ramayana are satisfactorily resolved by a more self-questioning Hinduism than Hindutva can ever be.

Without atonement for the miseries heaped upon women and the “lower” castes as a result of an uncritical acceptance of the authenticity of these episodes in the Ramayana, it would be an insult to Sita and Rama to build a new temple at the site of arrogance and vengefulness in Ayodhya whether or not it is the site of Rama’s birth.

Who said this?

It was Ramachandra Gandhi, the Mahatma's grandson.

Who is this 'Shudraka' killed by Rama? Possibly, Rishi Shambuka is meant. 

The story is from the Uttarakanda- a splendid satire on Religion and Ethics and the holier-than-thou Kings and self-aggrandizing Priests who blindly suckle upon those two breasts of the Goddess of Corruption.

Ram is a nice guy who loves his wife. But, because of some nonsensical scruple he banishes her and makes himself miserable. He also kills a great Rishi doing tapas (austere meditation) so as to prevent the guy from gaining Heaven, just because the fellow happened to be working class. 

Rama's action would be praiseworthy  if he he'd said- 'Bad enough the Brahmins, those lazy beggars, have indulged in this stupidity from time immemorial, but they are worthless cunts so let them keep to it. True some Kshatriyas (warriors) and Vaishyas (merchants) too have taken up this ridiculous and contemptible practise, but even that is tolerable because power and wealth inevitably create idleness and stupidity so that too can be tolerated. But, if even the working class- the productive element in Society- take up this nonsense then we are surely doomed! I behead this Rishi with my sword so as to save the common-weal. Let the working-class, at least, be free from this potent source of mischief. '

However, if Lord Ram had made such a statement, the Uttarakanda would fail as a tragic work of art and would simply become the ultimate Veda- or Divine Revelation.

Of course, from the Religious point of view, what is happening is that Shambuk is being elevated to the status of Ravana, who was a Brahmin and greatest of tapasvins (masters of austere meditation) and who gained the goal of ultimate Liberation by being killed by Lord Ram. That warrior himself, however, far from enjoying felicity is condemned, in the Uttarakanda, to separation from his beloved wife and the killing, rather than protection, of a Rishi. This is both funny, from the Cosmic point of view, as well as touching, if not tragic, because the truth is Religion and Ethics fuck up middle-aged people who somehow think they are better than others.

One important consequence of the Uttarakanda is we cease to clamour to have an Incarnation of the Lord to lead us here and now. Why? Incarnation is bad for God. It ends tragically. God suffers when he takes human form. Let the incarnations who have already come suffice for us. If some fuckwit sets himself up as an Avatar or Prophet, tell him to go fuck himself. He is a worthless piece of shit. Don't kill him. The guy is probably mentally ill. But don't give him money or let him sleep with your daughter or son or wife or whatever. Beat him as and when required and piss upon him at regular intervals so as to communicate your deprecation of his claims to moral authority.

Having dealt with the message of the Uttarakanda, let us now look at Ramachandra Gandhi's solution for the Babri Masjid issue. 

He says a crime has committed against women and 'lower' castes and for this reason nothing should be done, neither should the mosque be built nor a temple constructed, nor the land be returned to an agricultural purpose.

Thus, Gandhi thinks, reparation for a historical crime dictates how land should be used here and now. 

What is the flaw in this argument?

If a crime against women and lower castes requires reparation, why not a crime against the 'High Caste' Manuvad Hindus? Were they not conquered by Muslims? If reparation is owed to Women and Scheduled Castes why not to High Caste Hindu men?

The British left over 65 years ago yet India is quite happy to go on receiving Aid from the U.K on the grounds that this is some sort of reparation for their past crimes.

However, the British justified their exploitation of Bengal by saying it was reparation for the Black Hole of Calcutta, the massacre at Kanpur and so on and so forth. 

Ramachandra Gandhi, in the end, reveals himself to be as stupid as his grandfather- who thought the earthquake in Bihar was a divine punishment for the horrors of the Caste System.

The Mahatma was a head trauma victim. He wrote and said stupid things. His grandson was an intelligent, educated, man of spotless reputation. Yet, because he made the mistake of treating his grandfather's writings and sayings as being other than the ravings of a crackpot, he ended up saying foolish and stupid things.

What stupid and foolish people say about Ethics and Religion, in other words, almost everything Scholarly published under that rubric, is mischievous shite.

The Babri Masjid issue, all along, was a situation where co-operative Game theory- not tit-for-tat competitive Game theory- needed to be applied. The Law permits it, Revealed Religion (not Gandhian idiocy) sanctifies it, and the principle of Subsidiarity (the essence of Democracy) commands it.

Gandhian politics looks like an ideal basis from which to build co-operative solutions. Yet, neither in Gandhi's hands , nor in those of his heirs and apostles, has it ever worked as such. Instead, it has functioned as a mischievous interressement mechanism which flash freezes people and communities into eternally antagonistic roles. 

Gandhian thinking would turn the whole of India, the whole of the world, into nothing but rubble which is to be treated as sacred, which must be left in place, because 'the debris, the rubble, representing the hardness of our hearts and the shallowness of our minds, is more sacred as a confession of our unregenerateness' than as anything else more socially utile.

The point about Ayodhya is that it is a Temple town. Everybody can benefit if the pilgrim trade increases. There is a positive sum co-operative solution that dominates all others.

The Saudis have been accused of vandalism because they knocked down a lot of old buildings- no doubt of great antiquarian interest and aesthetic value- and turned Mecca into a technological marvel of Civil Engineering which, I am given to understand, fulfils its function very well at a utilitarian level. Ordinary people, from all over the world, go on pilgrimage there and find the experience glorious. Saudi Arabia will be able to draw revenue to maintain the Holy Places, from the pilgrims even if their oil suddenly runs out. 

It appears, the dilatory Indian Justice system has at last handed down a judgement that can be the basis of a co-operative solution. Instead of rubble, something more conducive to commerce may appear on the site.

It is noteworthy that the Gandhians, here as elsewhere, contributed nothing to the solution but, rather, sought to make permanent the worst possible outcome on the grounds that so stupid and foolish a course should be held 'more sacred'.

Indian Parliament canteen to open counters in Railway stations.

A good April Fool's joke from NDTV- poor people will be able to enjoy the subsidized food Indian Railways provides to Parliament- I just hope Mamta wasn't watching.

Why Gandhi failed to kill off khadi

Because the Second World War reduced the supply of mill cloth for civilians and because wages had risen, demand for khadi (home spun) was booming.
This posed a grave threat to Gandhi's core program.

He discussed methods of combating the menace of a healthy khadi industry with a fuckwit 'Social Reformer' of the period named S. Jaju.

Gandhi- My only condition will be that they (the weavers) should sell all the khadi they produce in the villages near about the centre of production, the tehsil, the district or at the most the province. They should  not,  like  the  people  of  Chicacole ( the city of Srikakulam),  produce  everything  for Bombay and use nothing at home.
J. Chicacole is an exception, and is the only production centre in the country for fine khadi.
G. Yes, even in that case I would ask the producers and sellers to wear what they produce or sell. They may send their articles outside but   they  mus t   also wear  them.  In   case they go   on  producing  fine
khadi   for Bombay but use only mill-cloth  themselves,  their  centre must cease to be run by the A. I. S. A. I would even insist that it be closed altogether.
J. Deducting something from the income of the craftsmen or women towards supply of khadi to them, we do make them wear some khadi. But this seems to be a sort of imposition. They do not take to it voluntarily.
G. I may put up with such a situation for a short period. I do not expect  people  to  take  to  khadi  immediately  and  to  accept non-violence.  We  must  educate  them  in  true  economics  and  in
non-violence. If we succeed in developing a true economic outlook in them,  they  would  ultimately  understand  non-violence  as  well.  An economics  which  runs  counter  to  morality  cannot  be  called  true economics. Our workers can develop an outlook of true economics in the villages only if they work under the inspiration of non-violence and morality.

Gandhiji worked tirelessly to destroy khadi- that is home-spun cloth. Yet, in the case of the fine muslin of Srikaulam, he failed. Why? Was it because he wasn't sleeping with a sufficient number of naked girls?
No.
The weavers of that place were highly skilled. They sold their produce at high prices in Bombay and used the money to buy cheaper mill cloth for themselves.
Gandhi was deeply distressed by those muslin weavers of Srikakulam; 'I know that Chicacole khadi is very popular and that it fetches a good  sale in  far  off  provinces;  but this  pains  me  very much.'

The All India Spinners Association employed 3000 workers. The expenditure was about 4 crore rupees as against revenue from sales of about 1 crore rupees. Yet, because of war time constraints on Mill production of textiles, khadi was profitable and this posed a problem.  How create Employment in such a way that it destroyed the Industry it concerned itself with?


J. Spinning, I hope, will become universal. Weaving of course will  be  a skilled craft carried on by a few as it is even today. The fact is that so long as there are mills, khadi production cannot  be  carried  on on a large  scale.  We  began  cloth self-sufficiency work in Surgaon. Ours was a five-year programme. Vallabhswami’s experience is that people do take to khadi but not intelligently. Once we withdraw from the centre, khadi also disappears. Unless the people grasp the place of khadi in
the entire economy of the village they will not stick to it. The benefits derived from self-sufficient khadi are so little that it offers hardly any attraction.
G. That also worries me. Vallabhswami’s words resound in my ears. Party feeling developed in his village. Fasting had to be resorted to. I feel that behind it all there was a mistake in approach somewhere. We offered inducements to the people, gave them facilities, but these do not serve our purpose. We have to discover to what length khadi, by its own inherent strength, can carry India forward. So far in our quest we have found that khadi is saleable in the cities but not in the villages. We have not yet succeeded in making it acceptable to the villagers. If we have been defeated we must confess our defeat. We should learn from our past experience and adopt  new  methods  of work if needed. That is why I say that we should stop producing khadi for the cities. Today about a crore of rupees worth of khadi is sold in the cities. We should hereafter make it clear to the cities that we cannot any more supply them ready-made khadi but will teach them how to produce it, leaving them the option of either producing it themselves or getting it from the producer. I am not enamoured of the sales of one crore of rupees worth of khadi in the cities. We should put into khadi work not money but brain and heart. In other words we shall now have ruthlessly to investigate the value of khadi in terms of its real potentialities. In case we find it does not carry us as far as we claimed, let us give it up or lower our claim or let us take up some other basic occupation such as agriculture. From the very beginning it has been my firm conviction that agriculture provides the only unfailing and perennial support to the people of this country. We should take it up and see how far we can go with it as basis. I would not at all mind if some of our young men serve the country by training themselves as experts in agriculture in place of khadi. I have come to realize that we have yet to overcome a lot of difficulties. The time has now come for us to pay attention to agriculture. Till now I believed that improvement in agriculture was impossible unless we had the administration of the State in our own hands. My views on this are now undergoing modification. I feel that we can bring about improvements even under the present conditions, so that the cultivator may be able to make some income for himself from the land even after paying his taxes. Jawaharlal says that any extra income to the peasant through the improvement of agriculture will be swallowed up under one  pretext  or  the  other  by  the  alien Government. But I feel that even if it were so, it should not hinder us from acquiring and spreading as much knowledge about agriculture as  possible.  It  may  be  that  the  Government  will  take  away  any additional  income  that  may  come  to  the  villagers  through improvements in agriculture. If they do, we can protest and teach the people to resist and make it clear to the Government that it cannot loot us in this manner. This is only by way of an illustration. I therefore hold that we must hereafter find workers who will interest themselves in agriculture.


Thus we see that the real reason Gandhi failed to kill off khadi was because he was prepared to give up completely and concentrate on killing off subsistence agriculture.
So, what is the moral of this story?
Non-violence can only succeed if you have sufficient moral fortitude to fully renounce it and shrilly denounce it if objective circumstances exist such that it might flourish in any case.