Sruthisagar Yamunan & Nakeeranar.

Sruthisagar Yamunan is a Journalist from Chennai. His name suggests Hindu heritage. He is writing for an audience which will contain many Tamil Hindus who have read the Thiruvilaiyadal Puranam, or are otherwise familiar with its contents. Yet he writes of the Poet Saint Nakeeranar- 

There is a popular story associated with Hindu god Shiva in the Tamil bhakti tradition.

I think this episode was not 'popular' but was highlighted by Tamil poets for a reason foundational to their craft. The question it raises is whether a poem is good if it answers a pressing question in a pleasing and prescriptive manner or whether it is good purely because of certain formal properties it may have. In other words, is poetry something 'natural' or is it 'artificial'?

A King is troubled by the question 'Is the scent of a woman's hair natural or artificial'? Though fitting in with the conventions of elite aesthetics, this is au fond a theological question re. the status of 'Shakti', the Goddess, who is also known as Prakriti (Nature). The orthodox answer is 'Shiva without Shakti is a corpse (Shava)'. The King, as though following Adam Smith's advise re. the proper manner to encourage virtue and the spirit of inquiry,  announces that a large monetary prize will be awarded to the person who resolves this question. Lord Shiva helps a poor Brahmin by giving him a poem to recite which does in fact win the prize. But the Court Poet, Nakeerar, objects. He finds fault with the poem. The poor Brahmin is unable to give a fitting reply. He is deprived of the prize. Lord Shiva, angered that his own poem has been found fault with, arrives at the Court to dispute with the Wealthy Poet who remains adamant and is punished horribly for his hubris. However, the poet's devotion to Muruga- son of Shiva & Shakti- causes him to chant a hymn in the former's praise which has entered the canon. Thus, Divine Grace is granted to him enabling him to recover his position. The 'open' soteriological question, parallel to the 'open' aesthetic question previously mentioned is- did Grace operate so that Nakeerar's poem rose above artificiality?

 In one sense, the question is silly. In another it is 'dialectical'. The nature of woman is such that the smell of her hair will always have a 'natural' as well as an 'artificial' component since women, at least when compared to men, are more capable of self-care and the attainment of attractive qualities and attributes.

Tamil popular theology has long been divided into a 'cat' and a 'monkey' faction on the question of whether Grace is a free gift or whether it requires some degree of effort or cooperation so as to be efficacious. The baby monkey, by its nature, has arms with which to cling to its Mother. The kitten, by its nature, lacks any such means of adhering to its protector. Thus the mother cat has to herself pick up her child so as to convey it to safety whereas the mother monkey knows her child will be able to hold on to her tightly enough.

 Nakeerar was, by nature a poet, but he was also a devotee of Muruga. Was this part and parcel of his devotion to the Tamil language? Tamils like me would say- 'Yes. Such is the nature of the Tamil language.' Atheists may say, 'No. The arrow of causation flies in the opposite direction. It is because Tamil, by its nature, is beautiful that Tamils name God 'Muruga'. The Theists will then accuse the Atheists of being ignorant of Tamil etymology and of foolishly repeating a Theistic claim made by the popular journalist T.V Kalyanasundaram. The Atheist then threatens to send the Theist to bed without any supper. The Theist retaliates by saying 'Granny is being mean. I will run away to join Mother Theresa'. Anyway, that's what used to happen with me the last time I stayed in Madras half a century ago. 

Yamunan is a young man. Still, he must have had a Granny or two. Furthermore he would be fluent in Tamil. Yet he completely mangles the story-

In order to test his devotee, the great poet Nakkeeranaar, Shiva assumed the guise of a bard and deliberately wrote a flawed poem to be presented to the king.

This is nonsense. Why would God write a flawed poem? Arguably, the Deity is incapable of doing any such thing. The problem here is, what in Judaism is called, the 'bat kol' question. Suppose a Voice from Heaven is heard during deliberations of the Sanhedrin. Does it have probative value? Perhaps. Can it form the basis of a judgment at variance with halacha? The answer is no. The same problem, under the 'rubric' of upashruti', arises in Hinduism though, since the Law is considered 'samskar', i.e. conventional merely, the opposite conclusion is arrived at. Exigent circumstances (apadh dharma) or even the strength of popular feeling make it advisable to pursue 'oikonomia', i.e. a discretionary and equitable course, rather than follow 'akribeia'- i.e. a narrow, juristic, protocol. 

But Nakkeeranaar stopped the king from awarding the poem a promised prize, attracting Shiva’s ire. During their confrontation in the king’s court, Shiva opened his third eye as a warning that Nakkeeranaar was finding fault with the work of god.

The background is that the poet had denied that the consort of his own tutelary deity had hair emitting a natural scent. In other words, he was denying that 'Prakriti', Nature, had an essence of its own- at least for Poets. But the effect of this denial is to downgrade the status of Poetry and deny its univocity with Beauty and with Nature. 

Moreover, in Nakeerar's time, it conflicted with the reigning school of aesthetics- more particularly for Saivites- viz. that of Abhinavagupta. What follows is a mimesis of the central claim of this school. The poet is burnt up without the chance to transmit (sampritti) his 'voice'. But, though lacking a son, he is saved by his hymn to God's son! 

Yamunan writes as though Nakeerar was correct to insist that poetry is formalistic shite of a sterile, wholly mannerist, type. God has a low opinion of poetry- including Theistic hymns glorifying Grace as the only means of Salvation. So God tests the Poet, and, presumably, rewards him for sticking to his insistence that even God's own poem is shite, indeed it is worse shite, than shite lucubrations of an entirely artificial type, precisely because God's poem has utility. It isn't wholly artificial in its methods and its ends. 

No doubt, Yamunan thinks Job, in the Bible, when tested by God, said- 'Only wealth matters. Though currently deprived of the same by acts of God, God does not matter at all. I am resolved to set up a Ponzi scheme. Getting rich by fair means or foul is the only thing which counts. Talk of the Divine is wasted breath.' 

Despite the threat of being burnt to ashes by Shiva’s third eye, the poet remained steadfast in his judgement of the poem. This story was dramatised in Sivaji Ganesan’s film Tiruvilaiyadal, in which the poet character famously says: “Netrikann tirappinum, kuttram kuttrame.” A wrong is a wrong even if Shiva opens his third eye.

A sin is a sin even if you die committing it and thus have no chance to expiate it. The question is, will Nakeerar be condemned to eternal torment? Is 'Shiva's third eye' merely Death and Annihilation? The answer- for 'artificial reason' (as Lord Coke described English Law) or 'Samsara'- is yes. But not so for natural justice.  

Why has Yamunan written such nonsense? Why bring in a God with a third eye if all you are saying is 'rules are rules'? There are two possible explanations. The natural one is that Yamunan is an ignorant cretin. He thinks of Sivaji Ganesan as a DMK mouthpiece. Why should a poor Brahmin win a prize simply because he is poor? Rules are Rules, I say. Aesthetic affirmative action, even such as is brought about by the direct Agency of the Almighty, is simply wrong. Equity can go hang. Mind it kindly.

The artificial explanation is that Yamunan is very artfully saying the opposite of what Scroll.in stands for while still getting paid for writing the sort of illiterate anti-Modi shite which is that smear-sheet's stock in trade.

Yamunan compares the hubris of Nakeerar (which arose out of a defective grasp of the dominant aesthetic theory) to the imbecility of Prashant Bhushan. Just as Nakerranaar had first to be punished to find his poetic Voice, Bhushan should be punished to relearn what Public Interest Litigation should be about. 

This episode seem to be reflected in the contempt of court proceedings initiated by the Supreme Court against lawyer Prashant Bhushan. Despite the court finding him guilty of contempt and the threat of a possible jail term hanging over his head, Bhushan has stuck to his principles and defended his criticism of the court.

But Nakeerar had the wrong principles! It is one thing to say- 'women, nowadays, are using all sorts of perfumes to make their hair smell nice'- some elderly misogynists, whose mothers passed away and who have never known a woman's love since then, may nod their heads in sour agreement- but it is quite another thing to say that the Platonic archetype of the smell of the hair of the consort of the Poet's Tutelary Deity is artificial, not natural. Why? The meaning is 'Poetry is merely something ceremonial and formal which is not pleasing in itself. It is wholly divorced from aesthetic philosophy. It attracts none but dullards.' Even if this statement is true, it is folly for a professional poet- as opposed to amateur poetaster- to make it. You are shitting where you eat. Bhushan says Judges are corrupt, unprincipled and in league with the ruling party to destroy democracy. This may be true. But if it is true, Public Interest Litigation is a farce. Those who indulge in it are either attention seekers or getting paid to do so- perhaps by foreign NGOs who have an interest in pretending that India is not under the Rule of Law. It is a terra nullis. Foreign Governments are not obliged to respect India's sovereignty. It has no abiding place in the comity of Nations.

The contempt case had been initiated suo motu by the court in July over two tweets that Bhushan had issued about the functioning of the judiciary and recent chief justices. Last week, the court found him guilty and was meeting on Tuesday to decide what punishment he should be awarded.

However, the proceedings showed that Bhushan’s principled stand has put the court in a difficult position. Whatever the outcome of the case, Bhushan will come out of it with his reputation burnished.

No. If he goes to prison and his right of audience is suspended, then a nuisance will be curbed. If he doesn't, then his reputation, like that of the Bench, will be tarnished. Clearly, he and his ilk can do nothing because the Bench is corrupt- thus there is no point paying lawyers, just bribe Judges already!- but, equally clearly, the Bench want to advertise its corruption. Judges won't punish you for naming names and quoting 'the going rate' for a particular type of case. Why? You are providing them with free advertising! The Judges are very angry at the lawyers who say 'No. The Judges are learned and incorruptible. They can only be swayed by legal arguments of an erudite and subtle kind. Thus I deserve a lot of money for fighting your case.' A professional prostitute would be equally incensed at men who say- 'that lady is not interested in gaining paying customers. Impecunious people are welcome to seek to seduce her. Indeed, she is hanging around on the street corner in the hope that horny beggars will waste her time by chatting her up.'

If the Bench won't punish Bhushan as they punished Justice Karnan then the supposition gains currency that the Judges are envious of the princely sums commanded by the advocates who appear before them. They want it to be widely known that they can be bought more cheaply. They look upon Bhushan as their benefactor. Indeed, the outcome of the case is that Bhushan has gained a lot of publicity in return for paying a one Rupee fine. The Bench, it seems, is grateful for having its insensate avarice and infinite corruptibility widely advertised by a fine upstanding officer of the Court who has been shouting- 'Judges are prostitutes! Just pay them already rather than bother chatting them up!'- for decades.  

The story of Nakeeraranaar shows how the humbling of hubris can open the path to Divine Grace and true excellence. That of Bhushan, so far, is the spectacle of hubris unchecked turning into a habitus of imbecility. Why did we ever think this silly fellow could be part of the solution, not part of the problem? 

I don't know whether Yamunan is a natural cretin or whether he has artfully disguised himself as one. But the same could be said about so many of those we used to revere in youth. Amartya Sen may be a careerist- i.e. an artificial cretin. But Amit Bhaduri, surely, was a natural cretin. But that's why Sen could do so much more harm.

 Yamunan is young. He will adapt with the times. Sooner or later Indian Journalism will revive. Who knows? Yamunan may attain the brief, but kairotic, celebrity of an M.J Akbar or P. Sainath. But, to do so, he must further deracinate himself. Tamils writing in English must pretend they know nothing of Tamil literary culture. Why? If you don't, people may suspect you are a closet Hindu, reading Puranas and going on pilgrimage to Palani. Far safer to pretend to have read Gramsci in the original, not Buttigieg's translation. I may mention that I am wholly ignorant of Tamil and spent all my time in the Mezzogiorno reading Quaderni del carcere. Since I didn't bother to learn Italian, my Italian sojourn was intellectually very fruitful.

Kasturi & Gomes scratching Kaul's eyes out

Malavika Kasturi, an Associate Professor of History in Toronto & Mekhola Gomes a Postdoctoral Fellow, attacked and tried to scratch out the eyes of a JNU historian for daring to suggest that, for Hindus, India has been a nation for thousands of years.

They write in the Wire-

At a time when history has become an ideological site for the redrawing of the idea of India, we write with the conviction that as professional historians we must be responsible in the interpretations of facts and arguments, especially when writing for the wider public.

Professional historians aren't responsible for shit. This is because they are stupid and ignorant. Smart people don't study History. 

The idea of India is, quite simply, that it is a nation which is overwhelmingly Hindus whose borders, where non-Hindu, are contested.  Ten years ago, this may not have been obvious because, for the first time since Independence, a non-Hindu was in charge. But, it is now clear, that non-Hindu was merely the Regent for a self-confessed janeodhari Saivite Hindu Brahmin who visits Temples. Thus, whereas Politics may be an 'ideological site', Indian History is merely an idiotic site where shitheads from Toronto can pretend to know something about a country they feel fortunate to have left. 

It is with the same conviction that we responded to Shonaleeka Kaul’s “The Idea of India: A Historical Corrective” published in The New Indian Express. In this reply to her rejoinder, “The Empire Strikes Back: Ad Hominem as History” we restate the fallacies and inaccuracies in Kaul’s articles which suggest that the idea of India is based on an “ethnic” and geographical unity that can be traced back to the 5th century BCE.

Kaul is correct. She, like Rahul Baba, is a Brahmin. Her religion does indeed prevail from Kashmir to Kanya Kumari. No doubt, the pale of settlement, beyond which caste would be lost, has expanded. But by the time of Ashoka, over two thousand years ago, Brahmins were found all over what is now India. True, Muslim majorities have ejected them from ancestral land. But India itself has a massive Hindu majority. Stupid people, like the authors, thought Sonia's Congress was anti-Hindu. Perhaps it was. But it has bitten the dust and will only rise from it by embracing 'Hindutva'. These two sad losers haven't got the memo. 

Kaul notes historians, geographers, and political scientists distinguish between the idea of a nation and nation-state.

But does not go on to say that historians and political scientists are as stupid as shit. Geography isn't real high I.Q but it is an idiographic discipline and has no business talking nomothetic shite. There is no single 'idea of a nation'. In America, there is a 'Nation of Islam'. Its idea of Nation is different from that of the 'idea of Britain'- which, it seems, is currently fraying. A particular person may have multiple conflicting 'ideas' of what a Nation means. By contrast 'nation-state' is an abstraction which could be considered a 'term of art' for a particular, shite, type of discipline. But, as a concept, it is essentially contested. 

These two Toronto desis don't have the I.Q to grasp these sorts of distinctions. 

However, the creation of India as a distinct geo-body, as “national space,” and its cultural and territorial configuration as Bharat is very much a product of the 19th century.

No it isn't. These two shitheads haven't noticed that Pakistan and Bangladesh and Burma went their separate ways. What is left is Hindu majority Indians 'idea of India' which corresponds to Kaul's conception. The Brits found they had to administer India along its own historical joints and ligatures. Ceylon was separate because it was Buddhist. Burma separated because it was Buddhist. Pakistan separated because it was Muslim. What was left was either Hindu majority or not sufficiently non-Hindu to go its own way.  

According to Kaul, a nation is defined as “a notion consisting of a jointly held sense of belonging to a common territorial and cultural entity.”

Hindus have that. They are an overwhelming majority. So India exists. 

Further she claims that her article “goes on to demonstrate concrete examples of such an understanding of India in history.” Yet, it is disingenuous for Kaul to argue that she is speaking of an idea of India that is merely cultural when she emphasises the importance of its presumed territorial unity.

Territorial unity arises if one can cross jurisdictions and settle elsewhere without loss of identity- which, in India, means caste identity. Germany had lots of princes and Bishoprics and so forth. But it was defined as a Nation long before it was united by the sword. 

Kaul claims that the idea of contemporary India rests on imaginations of geography and space as spelt out in several ancient texts.

No. She isn't a fool. She knows very well that other Hindus like herself know that the idea of India is based on the zone of permissible settlement without loss of caste. Within her own sub-caste, or mine for that matter, it was only four generations ago that caste ceased to be extinguished by 'crossing the black water'. But people like Motilal Nehru, who helped break that taboo, compensated by devoting them to the Nationalist cause.  

She suggests that the Indian nation has had geographical coherence and meaning since ancient times.

This is quite true. Indian Kings dreamed of themselves reuniting the entire territory under their own Rule. No doubt, the margin advanced or retreated but there was a large, diverse, stable core which persists to this day.  

However, B.D. Chattopadhaya

who actually knew some History, unlike these two cretins, but who didn't know shit about Game Theory and coordination problems and Schelling focality and thus was helpless as a babe in explaining the 'reverse Game theory' which is State ideation and formation. 

has ably cautioned us against making such anachronistic connections between early representations of space, geographical imaginations, and the modern nation.

But the fellow was wrong. He didn't know Economics and thus had a shit theory of history.  Hindu India is like Han China but with castes rather than clans. No doubt, its National identity suffered much more from Turkic invaders. But it reasserted itself- thanks in part, to the Brits who did see themselves, on the prayer of people like Raja Ram Mohun Roy, as protecting the feeble, and feebler minded, Hindu from the aggressive Muslims- and it is now clear that there was never a Secular interregnum, there was simply a Brahmin dynasty and a competing, largely non-Brahmin, Hindu National Party. Socialisms would come and go, but they were caste based. 

In other words, it is ahistorical to seamlessly project categories and concepts of the present (nation) onto older cultural categories like Bharatavarsha.

It is ahistorical to seamlessly project categories and concepts from the shitty little brains of Leftist cretins onto anything at all. The fact is, we have reason to believe that the guys who run things overwhelmingly believe in Bharatvarsha and Jambudvipa and so forth. By contrast, their mouthing of Commie bullshit or Ivy League bullshit was merely a case of monkey see, monkey do.  

All students of history are taught that we must strive to grasp the past on its own terms and not reduce it to the present.

That is because students of history are as stupid as shit. They must be taught not to masturbate in class. Non history students don't have to be told that the pizza they ate yesterday must be grasped on its own terms. You must not 'reduce it to the present', in the form of a turd, which you try to grasp and lovingly hand to your Professor in lieu of your homework assignment. 

Undoubtedly, the idea of a modern Indian nation has been a contentious one.

Coz non-Hindus didn't like it.  

While some made a case for envisioning India as a composite nation of many cultures,

but one majority Religion which considered that nation to be unitary 

others including Muhammad Ali Jinnah and V.D. Savarkar held the view that nations were based on religious communities.

Jinnah proved his point. Pakistan and Bangladesh exist. That's not contentious at all.  

The ideas of citizenship and the nation-state based on Savarkar’s understanding of the nation are especially pertinent in India today.

No. They were enshrined in the Constitution. Non-Muslim Refugees got Citizenship. Muslims who had fled across the border weren't allowed to return. Indeed, the Custodian of Evacuee (later Enemy) Property harassed some Muslims till they emigrated in the Fifties or Sixties.  

Such religious nationalism in India, based on unequal citizenship rights, is connected to exclusionary laws and processes like the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and National Register of Citizens.

The first confirms the status quo. The second was pushed through by the Supreme Court in fulfilment of promises made 35 years ago which, however, had legislative form from the early Fifties itself. In other words, nothing changed. These two cretins don't know enough history to distort it. They can merely repeat lies.  

Thus, it is the ethical responsibility of historians to guard against anachronisms and abuses of history to justify notions that exclude any group on the basis of language, religion, or ethnicity.

The ethical responsibility of shite historians is to fuck off to Toronto where they may receive intellectual affirmative action and be nurtured as victims of horrendous epistemic self-abuse.  

What these losers are trying to do, in essence, is try to sound smart without actually fooling anybody so Whitey will feel sorry for them and give them tenure so that they can minister, in their turn, to equally abject cretins.

In essence, in the attempt to link a reductionist and simplified understanding of geographical imaginations to contemporary ideas of national space and the nation-state, Kaul does a hop-and-skip citation of the Mahabharata, Vishnu Purana, and Xuanzang’s travel accounts before taking a giant leap to incorporate the philosopher Shankaracharya.

She could have quoted B.D Choothopadhyaya quoting the Raghuvamsa etc. to fill in those gaps.  

Throughout the broad period she covers, from the ancient past to the present, there were many conflicting geo-bodies,

Nonsense! 'Geo-body' is a term coined by a Thai Professor. But Thailand is nothing like India. It is not the case that Sanskrit would have been displaced even if a Dravidian King had united the country.  

spatial practices and political formations, spanning the shifting borders of empires and sultanates. In her rejoinder, when questioned, Kaul adds uncontextualised references to al-Biruni and Abul Fazl to argue that all these imaginations of space are “nonetheless hardly distinguishable.”

In Thai history, we can distinguish 'geo-bodies' which had practical effects- e.g. whether Khmer or Thai would be spoken. In India such effects are hardly distinguishable. Biruni & Abul Fazl had access to Hindu scholarship. They were reporting the Hindu communis opinio. But that hasn't changed very greatly. Kasturi might try asking her Granny. Gomes may not have this option. 

However it is important to note who Kaul cites, how she cites them, and more importantly who she leaves out.

These cretins cited some Thai guy. What's next? Will they quote a Cambodian chick with a dick?  

In her original piece, there was no room for spatial imaginations from the cosmopolitan world of the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal empire or other genres of writing in Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, or regional languages.

Why? Because it was short. These two cretins give no space for spatial imaginations from the cosmopolitan world of the Toronto Sultanate or Montreal's empire or other genres of writing in various comic books.  

For example, there is little space for the cultural imagination embedded in the hagiographies of Sufi saints about travel and space studied to such good effect by Simon Digby in this framework.

Digby was a nice guy. But he was utterly unpretentious. He understood very well that Pakistan meant to stamp out the collectives defined by vernacular Sufi Saints precisely because they represented recalcitrant territorial formations of a 'Zomia' type. In other words, the Sufi inhabited the 'shatter zone' of Empire. This tensions exist even in the Iqbal of asrar-e-khuddi. Data Ganj Baksh reproves Aurangazeb for 'zamin-bhook'- land hunger. 

Digby could be considered an 'old India hand'. He was certainly treated that way by 'Native Chieftains'- or their no good sons whom I used to drink with. Those old Raj families knew everybody who was anybody in the sub-continent either directly or though one of their matrimonially allied branches. You dared not put on side when talking to one of those broken down old sticks. He's be able to tell your Grandfather was a tehsildar not a Nawab. But they were good sports and kept quiet about it. I once told some elderly dowager that, as an Iyer, I am the hereditary Grand Duke of Ireland. Sadly, we were chased out by the leprechauns. Still, I was organizing an Iyerish Restoration Army- the IRA which she might have heard- and if she'd like to donate the price of a Guinness to the good cause I'd be sure to make her a Countess once restored to my proper sphere in life. She refused to make a donation but did put away the Sherry and made me drink a strong cup of tea to help the scones go down. Good people, as I said, but sadly lacking in 'cultural' or 'spatial' imagination. I suppose that is why they ruled over such a large proportion of the globe. 

Despite her subsequent references to al-Biruni and Abul Fazl, in Kaul’s arguments the Sanskritic “tradition” appears as the glue binding Indian culture and the nation together.

Why the scare quotes? Kaul is Hindu- like 80 per cent of the population. Sanskrit is the glue which binds her to me and most of the bits of India together. Persian may hold Iran together. Arabic may hold Arabs together. In India it is Sanskrit loan-words which makes Malyalam almost intelligible to the Garwalhi.  

This vast corpus of texts cannot be read in a linear fashion to fit into a preordained idea of India from the ancient past.

Nonsense! There is a way to do it and Hindus have been using that way of doing it for two thousand years.  

We should also not be surprised that complex notions of the spatial organisation of the world existed in pre-modern India.

Nor that the simple ideas that Hindus still have were shared by their forebears. It has always been helpful for Hindu to say 'these are regions where the language is strange, the dress is different, the cuisine is different, but which are still sufficiently like our natal place such that we can settle there without loss of caste- i.e. ability to retain membership in an endogamous grouping sharing the same religion and customs. ' 

While cosmological and spatial imaginations certainly exist in these texts, Kaul reads into these imaginations “ethnic” and “geographic” criteria to serve as the basis for the nation.

While these cretins refuse to do so despite the fact that those 'cosmological' and 'spatial' imaginations were directly and continuously invoked in the creation and preservation of the Republic of India. 

Yet making ancient “ethnic” categories into a basis for belonging

is what actually happens all over the world. No doubt, there are immigrants. But they are minorities. Consider Britain. Priti Patel may be of immigrant parentage but, like Bhownagree, the first Indian Tory MP, she identifies so much with the dominant ethnicity that she comes across as a British chauvinist unsympathetic to asylum seekers. In the US, Bobby Jindal or Nikki Haley exemplify this sort of assimilation.

introduces the fundamental question

which is answered by the Price Equation as modified by customary law

of who gets to belong to the nation and who is to be excluded.

Those descended from nationals and those who assimilate and become nationals are included. Everybody else is excluded. This is as true of Canada as India- though, no doubt, both countries take in a few refugees. 

While there were different evocations of community and selfhood, to suggest that these were subsumed into a unified geo-cultural space since the 5th century BCE is not substantiated by the vast and rich body of interdisciplinary work by scholars of Persian, Sanskrit and regional language texts.

These politically correct cretins mention Persian before Sanskrit!But then they speak of 'regional languages'. This means they admit Sanskrit wasn't regional. What could it be other than National? 

DNA studies shows a lot of intermingling till the caste system became endogamous some 2000 year ago. That is an ancient enough date for any Nation to be getting on with. No doubt, some territory was lost and some territory was gained. However, many Pakistanis and Bangladeshis don't consider themselves to be of a fundamentally different stock than Indians. Yet, they are separate nations. Do any 'Persian, Sanskrit and regional language texts' explains why this is so? No. The fact is non-Hindus have good reason to be wary of Muslim majorities. This is not to say that Hindus can't do ethnic cleansing. It's just that they aren't as keen on forcible conversion. 

Our two cretins are troublingly selective in their choice of targets for attack. 

Kaul is troublingly also selective in her deployment of the work of scholars including Diana Eck and Sheldon Pollock. She relies on Eck’s assertion that India is a sacred geography forged by pilgrimage over centuries. This is a shaky pedestal upon which to build an argument about the nation. Sacred space is not the same as national political space.

Unless, it has actually become so.  

Similarly, when Pollock writes of a South Asian cosmopolis bound by Sanskrit, his writings are clear that this Sanskrit cosmopolis does not map onto modern-day India either culturally or territorially.

Yet, this is what we see. It is not the case that Pakistanis or Bangladeshis study much Sanskrit in school.  

Pollock in fact highlights the instability of geographical imaginations of Bharatavarsha (The Language of the Gods in the World of Men, 2006, p. 193).

So what? There has been no instability in the geographical actuality of Bharat, that is India.  

To tie this idea of a Sanskrit cosmopolis stretching across South, Central, and Southeast Asia to the cartography of Indian nationhood is further evidence of the kinds of selective reading we highlighted in our rejoinder.

But it is these cretins who are doing the tieing! Indians would have no objection in a greater 'Akhand Bharat' coming into existence. The fact that Muslims don't want anything to do with the scheme is the fly in the ointment. A Nation may want more expansive borders but must make do with what it can defend.  

In fact, Kaul’s The Making of Early Kashmir (2018) has been subject to extensive criticism for its de-contextualised and anachronistic use of sources.

In other words, Hinduphobic cretins tried to scratch her eyes out. But those cretins get dumped on in their turn and thus hightail it to Toronto. 

There is a lack of clarity in these cretin's writing about their argument's relationship to India. It sounds like the sort of shite you are safer peddling in Canada so as to come across as a refugee from Fascism with complex educational needs due to a deprived childhood and being subjected to incessant epistemic self-abuse. 

There is a lack of clarity in Kaul’s writing about her argument’s relationship to the Nehruvian “idea of India” – cultural unity produced by diversity.

No there isn't. Nehru was a Kaul. His vacuity was of a similar stripe. Apparently, his brother-in-law had some knowledge of Kashmir's ancient history. Kaul is probably related to the Nehrus in multiple ways going back centuries. 

The idea of India is multiple, for civilisational narratives are part of modern national projects.

But cretins holed up in Toronto can contribute nothing in terms of ideas or narratives. Their job is to display an abject imbecility such as can only arise by reason of mental retardation and horrendous epistemic self-abuse in a backward part of the world.  

If Kaul wishes to speak of unity in diversity, as she does in her rejoinder, then she seems to be in agreement with the Nehruvian idea of India as enunciated in the Discovery of India (1946). But, this is not at all what her original article suggested. Why write a “corrective” if Kaul is merely trying to reinvent the wheel?

Why do these cretins write at all? Let them buy an air-ticket and come to India and catch hold of Kaul and scratch her eyes out. 

It would be disingenuous to believe that historical debates in public forums are not shaped by their contexts, just like the “cultural” texts and connections Kaul discusses.

Fair point. But, the historical context is- you cretins fucked up big time. Your side lost. Why? You didn't give a toss about India. You were just trying to get to Canada- or anywhere Whitey might take pity on you and offer you tenure on the basis of intellectual affirmative action and the terrifying type of intersectionality that your epistemic self-abuse represents.  

We are concerned about the world that Kaul’s conception of the past is taking us towards at a time when the “new republic” of Hindutva has been announced.

So, these cretins aren't worried about Modi. They are worried about Kaul. Why? Fuck is wrong with them? Will they be able to escape Canada and get to California by bashing Kaul? Let us hope so.  

In a moment when history is being used to aid and enable majoritarian nationalism,

Fuck off! Majoritarianism is kicking cretinous Historians in the goolies and telling them to fuck off to Toronto pronto. But this is a universal trend.  

it is more incumbent than ever that historians become part of these debates and intervene in ethical and responsible ways.

In other words, lie their asses off.  

Shiv Vishvanathan on C.V Sheshadri

Shiv Vishvanathan, a Professor of some shite subject at OP Jindal, writes in 'the Leaflet'.  

One of the most interesting polymaths I have met was the scientist C.V. Sheshadri.

Who was a Chemical Engineer who actually helped poor people using science. The fisher-folk remember him well. He got them to use cheaper, more efficient, catamarans made of some new material. He created a sonic device to attract fish. On the other hand, he also seems to have attracted cretins like Vishvanathan. 

His genealogy was immaculate. His grandfather was C.P. Ramaswamy, once Divan of Travancore.

Presumably because C.P's descendants were immaculately conceived.  

Sheshadri graduated from Carnegie Mellon with a doctorate and joined IIT Kanpur in its initial stages. He left to create a laboratory near a slum in Chennai.

Is there anywhere in Chennai which isn't near a slum?  

Sheshadri loved gossip over curd rice and roasted chilies spread over these stalls in the neighbourhood.

Chee! Chee! Don't eat curd rice which has been spread over stalls in the neighborhood.  

We spent hours quarrelling and gossiping over ideas in these places.

Hours? I suppose, finding a piece of curd rice not smeared with shit would be a time consuming task. No doubt, when Shiv found one such morsel a quarrel would ensue as to who should get to devour it. 

One afternoon he told me, “You social scientists have ignored the Constitution. It’s a skeleton of laws without an unconscious. It is too absent-minded to remember that it is embedded in multiple ecologies. Our judges are illiterate about nature. It’s a pity that when most of India depends on nature, our laws do not represent nature in the constitution.”

That's what happens if you eat curd and rice which is smeared with shit. You Lose your marbles. You talk nonsense. Nomos is different from Phusis. In Indian thought, Law is 'Samskar' it is not part of Prakriti. This cretin does not get that every country depends on nature. India is not unique. No Laws 'represent nature in the constitution'.

He felt that separate ecosystems like rivers, swans, and deserts needed representation.

Sadly, the Indian Constitution, which recognises certain Temple deities as having legal personality can also grant such personality to rivers.  

The Constitution he felt was too landlocked as a mentality to imagine the sea.

Sadly, the Supreme Court's mentality was such that it felt it had to take a case away from the Kerala High Court because of India's expanded claim over its littoral waters. It seems Constitutions can imagine the Sea after all.  

He murmured “you gobble up most of the evolution and think you are modern.

This is because he thought non Tambrams eat monkeys and tigers and banyan trees. Chee! Chee! Stick to searching the road for morsels of curd rice not too badly smeared with shit.  

'It is time you constitutionalise the sea, not as a law of the sea, which is a collection of illiterate defence pacts but the sea as imagination, as a way of life.” The coastline his favourite ecology had no place.

Yes, yes. Fundamental rights for mermaids must be read into the Constitution. Coastline should get right of audience. How come no Tsunami is a member of the Supreme Court Bar Association?

When we add nature in multiple times to the constitution, development as an official ideology would decline.

No kidding! The lunatics would have taken over the asylum with a vengeance! Sensible people would run away from the country.

I stopped him, as his ideas literally tumbled out, hatched in the evening by the sea.

How did you stop him? That is valuable information. Did you kick him in the crotch or did you crack open his skull? 

He said: “The sadness of India’s democracy is that our stalwart lawyers talk of rights, but they have no sense that the linear notion of time embedded in the Constitution abrogates the rights of most people.

Very true! I have a right to your house. I will have paid for it in the future. Indeed most people will be billionaires in the future and will have bought all your cool stuff. It is only the linear notion of time which is preventing them enjoying their property right now.  

 Constitution should be built in multiple time or most of our people are obsolescent by definition.”

No. Most are considered dead or not yet born. With 'multiple time' the dead can sue the not yet alive and vice versa.  

Without multiple times the sense of citizenship in the constitution is impoverished.

Very true! Hyper-intelligent Mermaids from the Fortieth Century are not being allowed to sue Popeye the Sailor Man for child support. 

Tribes nomads and crafts are constitutionally insignificant.

Which is how come Scheduled Tribes are not mentioned in the Constitution. Article 43 does not mention khaddar and handicrafts. There is no Directive Principle re. the Environment.  

After his first statement, he weighed to work out some ideas in his head.

What did he weigh to work out 'ideas in his head'? Was it shit?  

I was his resident social scientist, renegade enough to work in a science laboratory.

Clearly, Vishvanathan has an elastic definition of 'work'. 

He asked me tentatively, “What can science-especially the new debates for science do for the Indian Constitution. Think of the slums, most of the people are waiting to be regularised as people. The irony of the Constitution begins there.”

Why is this so badly written? Vishvanathan could write quite well twenty years ago. What is the reason for his descent into illiteracy? Has it something to do with O.P Jindal?  

We both discussed the importance of multi-disciplinarity.

Presumably while tugging each other off.  

He felt it was a cosmetic term, a dodge rather than an intellectually muscular exercise.

Fair point. It may be that this Chemical Engineer wasn't as much of a cretin as this 'Social Scientist' portrays him as.  

He wanted to create thought experiments for the constitution, create an ecology of debate, around the formalist illiteracy of the constitution.

He failed miserably.  

I asked him to think of a figure mediating science and philosophy. He immediately invoked the Polayni brothers, Michel and Karl, and argued that democratic idea would be different had they collaborated. We were both fascinated by the idea of ‘Tacit Knowledge’.

Karl Polanyi was ignorant and stupid. Michael was smart. An unwritten constitution and a free market will do better than either a Planned economy or some woke shite about Coastlines and Tsunamis getting fundamental rights to sodomy and affirmative action.

A tacit Constitution would have worked out rights against obsolescence and triage.

Nonsense! Being tacit, it wouldn't do shit- especially impossible shit.  

Michel Polayni argued that the world is a scientific method and is only partly overt and articulate.

Fuck off! The world is real. It isn't a method. Science isn't algorithmic.  

Science was as much embodied knowledge, where understanding was woven into silences.

As was ignorance and stupidity. 

One has to articulate the unsaid of science.

By saying 'miaow' or singing Gangnam style.

Similarly, we felt one needed a tacit constitution articulating the cognitive assumptions of the unstated beliefs of a system.

These cretins needed a tacit x which wasn't tacit at all. Why not want a cat which isn't a cat at all?

How does society look at time number numeracy and the body as a metaphor?

It doesn't. Only cretins with serious gender identity issues and very very complicated paraphilias talk that type of bollocks.  

How do we construct a difference? Is diversity built into the thought system? Or is the constitution just lazy liberalism?

Is this just verbal diarrhea? Yes. Sad. 

Sheshadri admired Aruna Roy and Medha Patekar. He called them the new constitutionalists. He felt that if India had developed the idea of a tacit constitution, the fate of the Narmada struggle would have been different.

Yup. This guy was as shite as Roy & Patekar. But at least they gained reputationally from their activism.  

The Supreme Court excelled itself combining bad law and bad physics enthroning a high energy society that had no place for tribals.

Furthermore, it personally buggered up the brains of this cretin. It also forced him to pick out morsels of curd rice from the streets of Chennai and to devour them though they were smeared with shit. Also Supreme Court disguised itself as my neighbor's cat and sat opposite my window licking its unmentionables.  

A tacit constitution would have shown that despite India’s civilisational legacy, the Indian constitution was based on linear time anchored on a development model, whose ideology tells us that the tribal has only two choices – assimilate into modernity or go obsolescent. A tacit Constitution would have worked out rights against obsolescence and triage.

But only tacitly. Anyway, tribals can make the same choice as this cretin. They too can babble bullshit.  

We had finished lunch by this time and we pursued rewriting the directive principles over coffee. Sheshadri felt that the Directive Principles would provide the new heuristics of the constitution.

Sheshadri may have started out as a smart Chemical Engineer. But long residence in India turned his brains to shit. 

A tacit constitution would require, what Madhav Gadgil repeatedly called a theory of diversity.

It is actually safer developing a theory of dishittery in the safe space of the Campus rather than actually protecting the Environment- coz goons will beat you up.  

Monoculture should be rare or unconstitutional. Nature should become an act of trusteeship, of soils, plants, forgotten hypothesis and defeated culture. When we add nature in multiple times to the constitution, development as an official ideology would decline.

But so would the power of officials. Indeed, they'd stop being officials when they saw they weren't getting paid. So they'd spend their time looking for morsels of curd rice on the roads of the slums in which they live.  

A tacit constitution needs a neighbourhood of sibling concepts.

It also needs a sugar-daddy whose dick it can suck to gain a little protein.  

Sheshadri and I were always appalled at the way modern regimes treated crafts and tribal societies. He claimed tribals were fellow scientists, only they follow a different science. They needed to be treated as persons of knowledge.

Whereas credentialized cretins who talk crap should be treated as persons of ignorance and stupidity. Indeed, they increasingly are.  

He suggested

by way of reach around 

that my idea of ‘cognitive justice’, which is a right to different forms of knowledge, anchored in cosmologies and livelihood, is necessary. Without the idea of Cognitive Justice, I argued that democratisation of knowledge was not possible. When science, official science, is a hegemonic system diversity is epistemically impossible.

The trouble with saying something is hegemonic is that you can then do nothing about it.

He claimed tribals were fellow scientists, only they follow a different science.

This is also true of cats. 

They needed to be treated as persons of knowledge.

Cats should be appointed Professors at O.P Jindal University 

Modern science emerges from a Judeo-Christian Cosmology

like the sort they have had in Ethiopia for thousands of years 

which saw nature as a resource, even as a commodity. Instead of the scientific temper, I had argued for the need of ‘Cognitive Justice’.

This is true. This guy really did argue with his cat about this

Sheshadri was already chuckling over his second coffee.

Yup. Caffeine can do that to you. But cannabis works even better. 

He insisted that we needed one more concept to make the Constitution more presentable. I was fascinated by the work of Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey on the right to information. Yet I felt, momentous as the law was, it was incomplete. A Right to Information needed a Right to Knowledge. We decided that an adda was required for it.

Hilarious! What starving tribals really need is RTI and a subsidized adda, or hangout, for  Credentialized cretins.

Later, I elaborated on the idea of the knowledge panchayat. Each community or group of communities should debate the nature of knowledge, examine policy from different perspectives. For example, instead of introducing biotechnology unilaterally, we should have invited the entire spectrum of agricultural society to a debate on crops and food and access it in their own language. We need vernacular and folk understandings to evaluate science and the fate of the margins.

Sadly folk of all types think this guy is a cretin.  

Sheshadri would laugh over these thought experiments.

In other words, the Chemical Engineer thought the Sociologist utterly hilarious. 

He sadly remarked, “Our elite is knowledge proof, we will need years of storytelling to build all this. Yet, he felt, that this was the fascination of democracy, its dialogic sense of difference.

Relative to tribals and fisherfolk, these guys were elite. They were common sense proof. 

Sheshadri died over a decade ago. I thought I would write this tribute to a great constitutionalist who felt science needed to be reinvented for democracy to stay alive. One misses him.

One is an asshole. Sheshadri did some useful stuff because he studied a useful subject. He may have talked ultracrepidarian bollocks- but he is dead and de mortuis nil nisi bonum.

There is nothing wrong with promoting 'intermediate technology'. But producers who see how a bit of tech can make their life better soon start buying even better tech. The credentialized do-gooder is disintermediated. The 'enrollment' and 'interessement' of the 'woke' elitist fails. Still if O.P Jindal- a very poor tribal woman who set up a People's University- will give you a Professorship after everybody else has told you to fuck off, then it is a case of nice work- if you can get it. 

Recursive Enumerability as Religious Education.

I suppose RE was compulsory at his Westminster

Like Civics at my, New Delhi, Missionary School

Elijah must come, sampritti to administer

For Sons but nap on the corpse of a fool.

Socrates's synodia letting him know he knows naught

& Megethology's maieutics further losing the plot

Renders Veda the butt of but its crude English wit

Thy Dream of the Rood, Daddy's nappy full of shit.

Recursive Enumerability provably closed under qubits

Is a Religious Education fed on its own fewmets

& tho' sons are the nicest thing to touch

Oikeiosis means, Love means nothing much. 

Envoi-

Kumara! If Aram or Porul drive the Brahmin out of Tamil Naad

Must Inbam, unjust, contrive Tamil in Thy bard?

अथातः संप्रत्तिः—यदा प्रैष्यन्मन्यतेऽथ पुत्रमाह, त्वं ब्रह्म, त्वं यज्ञः, त्वं लोक इति; स पुत्रः प्रत्याह, अहं ब्रह्म, अहं यज्ञः, अहं लोक इति; यद्वै किंचानूक्तं तस्य सर्वस्य ब्रह्मेत्येकता । ये वै के च यज्ञस्तेषां सर्वेषां यज्ञ इत्येकता; ये वै के च लोकास्तेषां सर्वेषां लोक इत्येकता; एतावद्वा इदं सर्वम्; एतन्मा सर्वं सन्नयमितोऽभुनजदिति, तस्मात् पुत्रमनुशिष्ठं लोक्यमाहुः, तस्मादेनमनुसशाति; स यदैवंविदस्माल्लोकात्प्रैति, अथैभिरेव प्राणैः सह पुत्रमाविशति । स यद्य् अनेन किंचिदक्ष्णयाऽकृतम् भवति, तस्मादेनं सर्वस्मात्पुत्रो मुञ्चति, तस्मात्पुत्रो नाम; स पुत्रेणैवास्मिंल्लोके प्रतिष्ठति, अथैनमेते दैवाः प्राणा अमृता आविशन्ति ॥ 

The Ezour of Veda

To have successfully created a character who lives and breathes

& who, with either wealth, or reputation, thy ego feeds

Or thy Faustian soul infanticides as Gretchen

Is the Veda of Ezour as Fetchit Stepin.

Riposte

For MIP* = RE, Tagore's Shudhra Dharma is a bila kaif asking why

All youse work-shy cunts don't just fuck off & die.

Mithi Mukherjee Transcending Idenkitty.

A decade ago, the American Historical Review published a paper by Mithi Mukherjee titled 'Transcending Identity : Gandhi, Nonviolence and some shite or other' 

It contains the following apercu- 

Encounters across geographical boundaries of all types, including those which happened in the past, feature meditations on differences in the way things are done or not done and goods and services are provided, or not provided, as well as differences in appearance, manners, norms, language and so forth. However, it would be ridiculous to suggest that such encounters raise a 'question of difference'. Rather, difference is what constitutes the thing as an encounter rather than a transaction. There is a presupposition that ipseity involves an identity which claims 'universality and truth'. The German Sociologist in Bengal says 'As a German Sociologist I have such and such universalist structural causal model and such and such universalist epistemology. However, in Bengal I found people had a very different structural causal model and a different epistemology'. No doubt, in Bengal the German engaged in certain transactions- e.g. ordering a meal and paying for it- which weren't different at all to the transactions he engaged in back home. But he does not expatiate on them. There was no 'encounter' with an alterity. There was merely a transaction. 

Mithi has a bizarre theory that where an encounter takes place, there is a 'discourse of identity'. This is not the case. You don't see tourists pondering the question of what it means to be of a particular nationality. They may note that foreigners do things differently but this is because they rely on, not a discourse, but a stereotype of how things are done back home. We react to tourist in the same way. We are gratified when, in keeping with prevalent stereotypes, the Japanese tourist bows while the Italian tourist pinches your bum whereas the Indian tourist steals all the little packets of hygienic products in the hotel room or all the sachets of condiments on the restaurant table. Here is the alterity which pre-exists the encounter which confirms it as encounter, not mere transaction. 

It may be argued that Mithi is speaking of intellectuals. But, the truth is, intellectuals are as stupid as shit. If they weren't, they'd see there was no encounter. There was only a transaction. They have nothing to write home about except boring economic, or mechanism design, stuff which would have to be empirically verified in an even more boring fashion. 

Mithi is pretending that something important happens when a shite intellectual from the West or a shite intellectual from the East traveled for some mercenary or meretriciously scholarly purpose from or to the 'Orient'. This is not the case. No Westerner had any profound thought about what it meant to be Western in the East and vice versa. Furthermore, everybody wrote silly shite of opposite valency. So noise cancelled itself out leaving only a signal relating to Transaction feasibility.

Mithi wants to pretend that some stupid shitheads whom stupid historians are obliged to read were actually very important indeed. This is not true. There was mimetics certainly. But mimetics is transactional not epistemic. We don't greatly care which Japanese visitor to the West had importance in shaping Japanese mimetics because quite soon there were a lot of them and thus noise arising from personal idiosyncrasy, or plain idiocy, cancelled itself out. Mimetics is Economic or it is not reinforced and perishes as a mere fad. 

This is what happened to the nutter Mahatma Gandhi. He was a crank and represented a passing fad. Mithi, fool that she is, thinks some great truth about identity and universality can be found- or forced into place- in the writings of a deeply silly man who fucked up Indian politics though, admittedly, helping some upwardly mobile members of specific Hindu castes. 

Consider the following-

Category theory exists in Maths. But what does it teach us? On the one hand, yes, there can be 'univalent foundations' for an episteme but only if predicate logic is replaced by Martin Lof type theory- i.e. is constructionist and contains 'witnesses'. But, on the other hand, differences parsable in predicate logic can't give rise to categories because of Russell's paradox. In other words, Mithi is talking utter nonsense. If the thing can't be done even for Peano Arithmetic, how can it be done for something as complex as Human History or Identity or whatever? 

All Mithi is saying is 'Marxists are stupid but they hate Hindu Nationalists. Hindu Nationalists may be equally stupid but nobody would pay any attention to them unless the Marxists had annoyed everybody by their stupidity. The Gandhian movement was empty of thought. It was purely gestural. Okay, one might say 'Gandhian cunts believed in reincarnation. So they believed everybody should give up sex and eating nice things and doing sensible things. Instead they should do a wholly self-defeating 'Satyagraha' so as to be reborn in Satya Yuga where everybody lives for 10 gazillion years and there is no scarcity- or sex, which, quite frankly is disgusting- and everybody talks holier than thou bollocks all the time.' But one could ascribe this sort of magical thinkinging to any bunch of nutters. So the thing is not useful. Instead one should look at why these stupid fadists found it worthwhile to indulge in such foolish gesture politics. But the answer is not far to seek. The thing was 'regret minimizing'. One was hedging one's bets. Also, it was a great way to fuck over the Muslims and the Dalits without the attendant danger of getting your head kicked in. 

 Mithi criticises the Marxist and the Cambridge School, both of whom get that Gandhi was a fraud, but does not understand that the reason they write such slow witted shite is because they don't know about Knightian Uncertainty and Hanan Consistency. In other words, they don't have the correct conception of homo oeconomicus. That's why their teleology is ka ka and reading them so utterly wearisome.

Mithi wants to go in the other direction. She wants to find some Kantian 'ends' in Gandhian gobshittery. But 'ends' of all type are shite because of Knightian Uncertainty. Hedging can be ontologically dysphoric. It makes sense to have positional goods, with reputational effects, of a type which are 'not at home in the world'. But these aren't 'ends'. They are hedges. At the margin, there is a Kavka's toxin type reason why the reverse may appear to be the case. In other words, some people will die to preserve hedges though they are pretending they serve 'ends'. This is rational because, under Knightian Uncertainty, we might have gone under a bus in any case. 

Turning to the Subaltern School- whose raison d'etre was to permit some Indians to escape India's horrible Campuses- Mithi makes Partha Chatterjee sound almost sane.

This is very foolish. 'Peasant consciousness' is largely concerned with finding ways to stop being a fucking peasant. This means fucking over other peasants. Gandhi-giri is one way to do it. The Co-operative movement is another. Even Communism could be useful. However, the only 'final solution' is getting girls off the land and into large factory dormitories. The boys will follow on their own accord and the more submissive among them too can be employed in factories. The rest can be security guards or work construction. 

The distinctiveness of Gandhian discourse is that it was so obviously constructed of stupid, self-contradictory, lies. Anybody can be a Gandhian if she is shameless enough. 

Mithi's own position arises from an imbecilic fallacy. She thinks if Gandhi did not write in English then he escaped Western categories. The fact is, even Azad- who received a traditional Islamic education- had been 'Aligarhized' as a teenager. All the main vernaculars had been Englishified. Gandhi uses the English word 'history' when writing in Gujerati because English type 'history' was History. 'Itihasa' was mythology which represented 'arthavada' and was 'mithak'- i.e. it was imperative not alethic. Sir Syed Ahmed had demanded that English language instruction replace Urdu for all but alethic, i.e. Scientific, subjects. Why? Writing in Urdu made you stupid. The solution was the creation of bureaucratic 'purified' vernaculars in which you can write reams and reams of Mithi type shite without ever having to engage a single brain cell.

Gandhi was as ignorant of Western as he was of Indian thought. A few years later he tried to debate the Pundits of Vaikom and was quickly defeated. By then he was saying 'fuck categories. I can spin cotton. Also I clean toilets. So I am a Dalit Kabir type Saint. Just take my word for it already. Moreover, sleeping naked with young ladies means I have super-powers. Give me some more money for my various silly money-pit schemes. If it weren't for me, the Brits would have fucked off in 1924. Thankfully, I surrendered unconditionally in 1922 saying in Court that India could not defend or feed itself. Still, sowing disaffection against India's protectors was one's unavoidable duty coz disloyal dogs are lower than loyal dogs and so Indians must be snarling curs simply to remind Britain of the increasing moral ruin they, shouldering the White Man's Burden, inevitably had wrought. 

The truth is English can borrow 'categories of thought' from any language ancient or modern. Then the Mathematicians and Physicists and so forth get to work on the thing and we have something useful. But this has always been the case everywhere. Stupid people- politicians, historians, socioproctologists etc- play no role in this. 

Mithi says Gandhi was a 'sanyasin'. This is untrue. He may not have been fucking his wife but she was cooking for him- and, according to Bhiku Parkekh, tearfully preparing mutton chops for Maulana Azad. There already had been plenty of Revolutionary Sanyasis. Even the mildest of them, Swami Rama Tirtha, inspired Bhagat Singh and Bismil. Gandhi wasn't trying to compete with Vivekananda or Baba Bharati (both of whom Tolstoy read) or Aurobindo, not to speak of Brigadier Dyer's great enemy in Iran- Amba Prasad Sufi. Gandhi was on the other side from these genuinely learned Renunciants. But he offered safety to young people like G.D Birla who had to go underground after being linked to the Roda cartridge case. What was the upshot? Police Commissioner Tegart who killed Bagha Jatin and put down the 'Anushilan Samiti' revolutionaries, ended up on Birla's payroll! The 'politics of non violence' was about not getting sentenced to hard labor in the Andamans or getting hanged by the neck. But it involved episodic unconditional surrender and going meekly to jail after each occasion where your people had run amok and thus strengthened the Brits by pissing off the Muslims. 

Gandhi did have an 'enunciative persona'. But it wasn't Religious or involve Renunciation. He was the 'Dictator' of an essentially timid Movement. His job was to unconditionally surrender as and when doing so was fatal to Indian Nationalism- as opposed to majoritarian Hindu mercantile & bureaucratic interests. 

Mithi thinks Gandhi in South Africa was part of a 'juridical discourse'. Is she not aware that there was a War there? Smuts, was a smart barrister but he gained salience on the battlefield. Had Milner been able to impose his 'kindergarten', maybe there could have been a 'juridical discourse'. But Kitchener tipped Smuts the wink that the Liberals would win. Then Smuts played the Yellow Menace card- at about the same time that F.E Smith, invoking Ucalegon, decried a fellow MP who had won an election by suggesting that Chinese coolies would come to take jobs from British coal miners! Smuts could deport the Chinese. He couldn't deport the poorer Indians because they were subjects of the King Emperor. They genuinely couldn't pay the poll tax. They couldn't be forced to work- that was slavery by another name- and they would have to be repatriated and resettled at the cost of the British exchequer. Thus it was inevitable that the Indians would win. Gandhi's greatness lies in his diluting their victory to Smuts's great satisfaction. But Smuts was glad to see the back of Gandhi. The guy was a shite lawyer- there was no point doing a deal with him because he'd change his mind and accuse you of perfidy. 

On first being arrested for breaking the Pass Law he did a deal to get out after a few weeks. Then he went around saying 'Giving fingerprints and carrying a Pass is a very good and salutary thing. What I was objecting to was the suggestion that we Indians needed to be compelled to get them. The truth is we love such things and clamor for them.' Naturally, some Indians beat the shit out of Gandhi. He learned an important lesson. After you fuck up big time, you need to spend at least a year or two in jail till people forget what a fucking asshole you are. Smuts, however, was not impressed with Gandhi's mendacious claim that the Government would repeal the law if Indians voluntarily registered. The fact is, in Law, there is a presumption that people voluntarily comply with laws. Those who don't are punished severely if their defiance is willful. It has never been the case that a Law is removed from the Statute Books just because it proves unnecessary. Rather we say it falls into desuetude and may, at some later point, be abandoned along with other obsolete laws. Anyway, the real issue was fingerprinting and having to carry a Pass and pay the poll tax and so on. Gandhi's 'juridical discourse' consisted of telling stupid lies and running around like a headless chicken till beaten by his own or jailed by Whitey. 

Mithi mentions Tolstoy farm. She does not mention Vivekananda and Ramakrishna's earlier influence on Tolstoy and his 'letter to a Hindu', replete with quotations from Gita and Kural, which Gandhi read. This was of obvious use to him which is why he translated it into Gujarati. What made it useful? Tolstoy says get rid of the specialised knowledge of Religion, Science, Economics and so forth. Affirm the simple law of love. What perplexities remain when everybody would be better off simply by rolling around naked in the mud till they die of typhoid?  

Mithi thinks the Indian Freedom Struggle was led by renunciant sanyasis. This is false. Some people who would have become ascetics anyway also participated in Revolutionary politics. But most did not. There were some professional Revolutionaries who weren't ascetic at all but the British police were good at penetrating and rolling up their networks. A few landed up in Moscow or Japan or Berlin and so forth. But, the vanguard of the Freedom Struggle was constituted by Teachers and Lawyers and Journalists and Labor or Peasant leaders etc. 

Gandhi, like other lawyer/journalists, faced the problem of how to gain a livelihood while doing stupid shite. Yes, one could beg for money- but on what basis? The answer was to have a money-pit Ashram and various crackpot money-pit schemes. The idea was that the nutters employed in this manner would always be available for 'organizational' work. In other words, a captive 'rent-a-mob' was maintained. This could be useful for the purpose of pretending you had a tremendous grass-roots following such that the Government must concede the financiers the corrupt rents they were seeking. The problem with this is that it alienated minorities. Why should the Muslim burn his stock of foreign cloth so some Hindu mill owners could make more profit? Tagore had warned against this type of stupidity a decade before Gandhi returned to India. That cretin did not understand why his presence at Champaran was so important. It was to provide cover for the 'cow- protection' riots raging across Bihar. The Muslims were prepared to trade-off cow-protection for Khilafat and this is what gave Gandhi his big break. But he betrayed the Muslims by unconditionally surrendering in 1922. By 1932, his antics had caused all minorities- even Sikhs, Dalits and Justice Party Dravidians- to unite against the High Caste Hindus his Party represented. What was the result? Viceroys stopped listening to the INC. They did whatever was in Britain's interest while siding with Muslims. This meant that when Congress finally took power in the Provinces in 1937 it behaved in an equally 'communal' fashion. This was not inevitable. 

Apart from, wholly erroneously, saying that asceticism was connected to the Independence struggle- though some ascetics supported it, just as some Catholic priests supported the IRA- Mithi blunders unconscionably by thinking that 'Mukti' or 'Liberation' valorized by Indic Religions had any political meaning. It didn't. It was perfectly compatible with slavery and Imperialism of various types. 

Mithi's ignorance of India is genuine. She isn't just trying to pull the wool over the eyes of gullible Americans. She writes-

This is stupid shit. Some Western theologians had similar notions to some Indian theologians. But that was wholly irrelevant. In Indian cities, poorer people wanted more representation just as they did in Western cities. In the countryside, peasants wanted to own the land, not pay rent or tax, and to plunder the fucking Money-lender. But this was true everywhere! The America of Satyananda Stokes was the same as the India where he went to jail. Himachal's 'Johnny Appleseed' soon saw, married to an Indian Christian, that there wasn't much difference between the problems of rural people across the globe. True, some Bengali shitheads may have convinced themselves otherwise- but Bengal would soon turn into a basket-case. 

Moksha means dying- or being as good as dead. That's Liberation from the Soteriological point of view. But Freedom means Hohfeldian immunities. Sadly, what the Indians wanted was an immunity from paying in any way for public goods. Thus the apotheosis of Gandhian politics was achieved when Independent India turned into a giant begging bowl for American charity. No doubt some Bengalis- or even Madrasi Brahmins- would very kindly explain that the hole in the begging bowl is the soul whose goal is Moksha which you too can get from my cousin the Swami who is charging in US dollars only- mind it kindly. 

Mithi's Westerners are so crass that they think Freedom means being able to do smart things which benefit you without too much interference by corrupt or crazy officials. Mithi's Indians are so crap they just long to die and become one with an indifferent, almost entirely lifeless, Cosmos. 

Mithi mentions 'purusharthas'. But all human life can be conceptualized like this. Only certain high caste males pretended it was normative for them in India- but this was merely pretense. But there have been plenty of other societies where it was usual for older people to join a Monastic Institution of one type or another. It is in America, that the Retirement Home with Yoga and Mindfulness and so forth has created vast demographic clusters whose votes can sway Presidential elections. 

Mithi lives in a parallel universe where Gandhi gave up sex, got Moksha, and this meant India got independence. The truth is everybody got independence at around the same time because Imperialism could not pay for itself. Gandhi may have looked, at one time, like a great popular leader coz he wore a loin cloth and talked bollocks. Then Jinnah put on a Sherwani and got 83 percent of the Muslim vote. Suddenly, Gandhi was an embarrassment. Fortunately some equally crazy celibate shot him. 

What really happened in the East was that the first World War convinced even the Princes- some of whom saw battle- that Monarchy was no longer an option. War wasn't the sport of kings. If India was to defend itself and project force it would have to pay taxes, develop industries, and have lots of soldiers trained to kill. Gandhi represented a protest against this. Certain Hindu castes, it seems, were utterly shite. If India started to rise, they would have to be less shite or risk getting relegated to teaching History in Amrika. 

Consider the following shite-

service.

This is crazy shit. Roy lobbied Westminster to permit unrestricted settlement by Brits in India. He said this was the only way the Hindu would be safe from the domineering Muslim bully. His idea of social service was to get very rich by fucking over the peasants. Dwarkanath Tagore carried on this great tradition of licking the boots of the Brits. Brahmo Samaj was about getting rid of idol worship so as to be more like the Muslims. But by the time of Vivekananda, it was obvious that Hindu agricultural castes would kill Muslims in Hindu majority areas. There was no point sucking up to the Muslims. Rather one should try to fuck over the Hindu agriculturists by pretending one had some sort of Godly alliance with the Muslims- who, after all, were not lacking in valor. Gandhi's Mum had told him, 'if you touch an Untouchable, quickly touch a Muslim to pass on the evil. Otherwise you will have to take a bath to regain ritual purity.' Thus, pretending to be allied with the Muslims meant touching the Untouchable so as to be able to rub off that evil on the meat-eating mleccha. 

Indians, like everybody else, believed that getting a job and looking after your family was social service. At the same time, they noticed that those who had dedicated themselves to social service where unemployable shitheads. Still one didn't have to be a dick about it. 

Roy, Tagore & c, did no Social Service. They got rich and sucked up to the Brits like nobody's business. They were greatly hated by Hindus. But many a Mukherjee has a soft spot for the Brahmo Samaj- probably because it licked the arse of the Brits but good, whereas the Arya Samaj bred Revolutionaries but also 'Hindu Nationalists' while the Prarthana Samaj seems to have been entirely sensible. 

The Ramakrishna Mission, it is true, produced Revolutionaries. But that sanyasi tradition is represented by Narendra Modi. Vivekananda is perfectly acceptable to the Arya Samaji or the RSS man. Mithi Mukherjee, thanks to her ignorance of India, is endorsing the BJP though no doubt she thinks herself as on the right side- i.e. the Left side- of history. But this is why the Indian Left's long march through the Institutions has ended in utter ignorance and irrelevance.

This is nonsense. Vivekananda found moksha quickly- by dying. But Sister Nivedita, who was Irish, spent a lot of time telling young Indians- like Subramaniyan Bharati- to go kill Whitey already. This was pretty political. The 'Anushilan Samitis' split between Leftists- some of whom reached Moscow- and Hindu Nationalists. The Leftist branch died long ago. Modi represents the Hindu branch and, thanks to him, the BJP has displaced both Congress and the Left front as Mamta's main rival in West Bengal.

Mithi then mentions Tagore's Gora but not Ghare Bhaire. She doesn't get that Tagore is saying 'Muslims are the majority in East Bengal. They will slit Hindu throats and take our Estates. Enough with this 'Swaraj' nonsense. The Bengali bhadralok will lose most if the Brits leave'. But then, this was the ancient tradition of his House. Roy and his Granddaddy had lobbied for unrestricted White settlement in India because they needed the Brits to protect them from their former masters- the Muslims. 

Mithi speaks of a 'discourse of Imperial justice'. What does she mean? The answer was protection of property. The landlords needed the Brits to keep them rich and secure. The problem was that if they tried to push for more power and yet more property, the Brits could cut them out as middlemen. The spread of education and of access to markets meant that peasant and other productive castes were rising up to challenge the propertied bureaucratic elite. However, it was only the new class of Hindu speculators turned industrialists who were willing to finance a National movement. Why? They hoped to gain tariff protection and a business friendly monetary policy. This could only be done by taking control at the center. At one time it seemed they could do this in alliance with the Muslim mercantile and 'Ashraf' landowning castes. Gandhi's genius was to sabotage this possibility. 

All this is nonsense. In 1857, John Company found that their attempt to bypass the Landowning class so as to deal directly with the peasants of Oudh had backfired. So, in 1858, the British Government took over. It decided to use intermediaries as far as possible. The Law gained salience because intermediaries had increased residuary control rights. By the 1880s, it was obvious this scheme wasn't working because the intermediaries were crap. There had to be higher local taxation to supply local 'Club goods'. But this meant a measure of representative Government was required. Thus, some British Civil Servants created the Indian National Congress. But this was monopolized by Hindus and so a Muslim League came into existence. Had either the principle of Partition or that of a loose anti-Imperialist Federation been accepted then India would have become free at around the same time as Ireland and Egypt. But the Hindus had convinced themselves they could have it all. The result was that, thanks to Gandhi's leadership, they had to accept whatever it was convenient for the Brits to give them from time to time. Things did not improve after Independence because the Hindus had gotten used to begging bowl politics. 

The discourse of Justice is the discourse of Politics. It is about appropriable and residuary control rights over property. Good lawyers bridge the gap between Court and Legislature. India did have a few of these but it also had the cretin Gandhi who fucked up everything he turned his hand to. Suppose Gandhi had supported peasant and tribal agitations. The class of intermediaries would have had to add value or else disappear. The State's Revenue would go up. This makes it worthwhile chucking out the Brits to gain control over Credit Creation. This is what should have happened but didn't.

Gandhi's idiocy meant that the class of intermediaries could continue to add negative value. This didn't matter to Gandhi because his money was coming from speculators turned industrialists. Sadly he could not prevent development and education and young men turning into smartly dressed soldiers. Thus he died a disappointed man.

Mithi thinks Indians didn't have 'a discourse of resistance'. What the fuck does she think the Mutiny was about? 'Kill Whitey' is not exactly a Hegelian synthesis only achievable after the Owl of Minerva has taken flight. It's the first thing one thinks of- more particularly if Whitey has a nice bungalow you can loot and pretty kids you can sell to a brothel. 

It is foolish to speak of 'Resistance' in a country where Whites were few and far between. There could be a discourse of massacre and there could be a discourse about how to divvy up the spoils. But organized resistance was resistance the other side could anticipate and instrumentalise- i.e. it was organized to fail. Spontaneous was the way to go. Slit throats, run away, return to slit throats another day. Meanwhile, the respectable classes could do boycotts and demonstrations and so forth- but only on a spontaneous basis. If the thing was planned then it could be gamed. 

The problem with the anti-Rowlatt agitation was that it was planned, not spontaneous. The Brits locked up the respectable leaders. The anti-social element ran amok in Amritsar. The District Administration's response was suspiciously weak. Dyer- fresh from the Seistan campaign- comes in and shoots a lot of people without even bothering to declare Martial Law to keep things kosher. What is the result? Punjab quietens down. Apparently the Brits also machine gunned peasants from aeroplanes- but that may be a myth. Having saved the Punjab, Dyer leads mainly Indian troops to victory over the invading Afghans. Gandhi calls off the Rowlatt agitation describing it as a 'Himalayan blunder'. Later Punjabi Premiers would whimper to the Brits for 'the smack of firm government'- i.e. Dyer type massacres. 

Dyer preserved British rule in India such that the Brits could borrow money from India to pay for goods and soldiers from that country to help them win the Second World War. Dyer's genius was to show the Indians that the Brits weren't in India to do 'Nation Building' or to listen to stupid barristocrats. They were there only in their own interests. Either Indians accepted the Brits on the terms they dictated or they were welcome to try going it alone. But, this meant India would have to develop its own military capacity and use that capacity in a manner not wholly destructive of property and productivity.

What should the Indians have done? Ireland supplies the answer. It should have set up a separate Justice system and used demobbed soldiers to train up territorial regiments in each province. This would signal two things- one, property and productive capacity would be protected. Two, there was a Military and Police force with some cohesion and training ready to step in which would obey political leaders rather than engage in War Lordism. 

Gandhi did speak of a parallel legal system and the Congress did set up a 'black shirt' Seva Dal. But nothing came of either. Gandhians, like Sardar Patel, would still use British Courts to get the Wills of their deceased relatives overturned. Smart young people still wanted to join the Civil Service or rise at the Bar or gain military training in the Army- precisely because the Brits who presided over these institutions were good at their jobs. 

Mithi speaks of Gandhi becoming a Sanyasin as part of some discourse or the other. The truth is every type of loser ends up with a begging bowl and a supposed spiritual mission to transform Society such that cats will marry dogs and Capitalism will go away and Nationalism will punitively sodomize Xenophobia and Socialism won't be utterly and predictably shite. 

Mithi quotes Vivekananda as saying that the Indian masses look up to Sanyasins and that the vast numbers of them wandering around trying to get some food could be a force in the transformation of Society. But, Vivekananda died young. People listened to him because he was smart and educated- not a typical beggar at all. Most Sanyasis were and are as stupid as shit. Nobody listens to them. Maybe, Babaji will bless your wife so you have a son. But maybe he will be doing the blessing with his dick. True, at one time bands of Sanyasis could get together and terrorize localities into feeding them. But that was before the time of reliable revolvers and rifles. Shooting Sanyasis discourages the fuck out of them. Still, disguising yourself as a Sanyasis to go to some wilderness where you train brawny young men in guerilla warfare, would have been quite a good expedient. The problem was people suspected that half the Sanyasis they came across were Police spies. Who knows? Perhaps they were. 

Reading Gandhi can either make you laugh or it can make you stupid. Laughter is a good thing. It makes you charitable. You know what the cretin is getting at. The fact that he mangled the usual sanctimonious argument, endears him to you. Gandhi was endearing. He gave a lot of people the chance to spend some time in Jail where they could read books and do a bit of Yoga and get away from the wife's nagging and the kids incessant demand for money to buy school books. Imprisonment was a good thing. Lawyers should be sent to Jail regularly. At least, this is the case with Indian lawyers. Why? They don't get that the Law is what Judges say it is, not whatever they say it is so as to earn money and fame. 

Mithi does not read Gandhi, or Tagore for that matter, for- as would be right and proper- shits and giggles. She speaks gravely of their correspondence- those two elderly cretins!- and Tagore's disapproval of Non Cooperation which Gandhi very quickly gave up. She does not see that Tagore, in his vacuous way, was saying 'Muslims will kill us if the Brits leave' while Gandhi, in his cretinous way, was replying 'Upanishads say 'neti, neti'. That means to tell the Truth you must reject the Truth and tell the stupidest lies possible. Also, Hindus are the majority in Gujarat. Fuck we need the Brits around for?' It is hilarious to read of these two married householders talk of being world renouncing ascetics rather than guys who constantly had their hand out for money to finance their foolish money-pit schemes. 

Mithi thinks Gandhi and Tagore mattered. They could have done. But they didn't- save as a measure of the stupidity of the cohort and the class they represented. These were old geezers who were relentless self-publicists because they needed more and more money for their vanity projects. 

Gandhi did lead a united Congress-Khilafat combine for a brief period- 1919 to February 1922- but he surrendered unconditionally. His financiers, however, kept getting richer which is why he could make a come-back. But he represented the idiot constituency. Everybody else was barking up some different, equally foolish, tree. Then the Brits left and India adopted the Gandhi-Tagorean begging bowl as its final act of revenge against Turks and Brits and other such Mlecchas who had briefly made it an attractive place to sojourn, if not settle, in. 

This is nonsense. What we see in India from 1917 onwards is the conversion of British paramountcy into a juridical Nation State with representative institutions and a distinctive, increasingly indigenized, administrative apparatus. The separation of Burma and the creation of Sindh province in the Thirties paved the way for the linguistic, confessional, and other reorganization of the Provinces which is still continuing. Legislatures and Courts wrestle with the same issues now as they did in the Twenties and Thirties. Gandhian imbecility and Tagorean vacuity were features of that period but we still have plenty of shitheads of that stripe. 

What is this shite about 'Nation-States' being the 'all-powerful arbiter of the destiny of people and society'? Where has that ever happened? Ideologies can truly fuck over a Society. But Nation-States are simply the form of Government you have once Empires cease to be fiscally viable. 'The discourse of identity' is the corollary of teaching a shite subject to cretins. You don't find smart people doing it unless they are terribly woke LGBTQXYZ nutters who have married their pussy-cats and are eagerly awaiting the birth of a litter of kittens only some of which will look exactly like them. Thus these sad losers will need to discourse about Identity- or rather Idenkitty- to other sad losers. 

Non-Violent movements have often changed Society and caused maps to be redrawn. India's map wasn't non-violently redrawn- it is true- but only because Gandhi, and Hindus in general, was as stupid as shit. However, Norway parted company with Sweden in a perfectly peaceful fashion. Czechoslovakia broke up in an amicable manner. The thing could be done if there were sensible people around to do it. 

Mithi, being a historian by profession, thinks otherwise

All this is nonsense. Britain faced a challenge in India on 3 occasions

1) 1920 when it was militarily overstretched and faced an internal 'Red scare'. Ireland and Egypt and Turkey asserted themselves. India, because of Gandhi, failed miserably

2) 1930 because of the Financial Crisis. Again, Gandhi failed yet more miserably. All the minorities, including Sikhs, Dalits and the Justice Party, formed a united front against Gandhi. Thus Britain would dictate the pace and nature of Constitutional change

3) 1942 when the Japs were at the gates. Another abject failure. Satyagraha simply means the Brits know whom to arrest and when to do so. 

The 'core notion of political freedom' is to kick out foreign rulers. Not talk shite about renunciation and spirituality and non-violence. Brits faced challenges in Ireland and Egypt and so forth and were forced to give up. In India they met a challenge which quickly turned into vacuous gobshittery with everybody demanding to be sent to Jail till they had cooled down and gotten right with Ahimsa or Moksha or Satyagraha or some other such shite. 

Why is Mithi writing such absurd nonsense? The answer is she has been reading Hegel- never a good sign in a Bengali. 

Hegel was talking about the French Revolution. He considered Indians to be cretins. Had he lived to see Gandhian stupidity, it would have confirmed to him nothing about Fichtean 'negative freedom', because Gandhi was too stupid to form a coherent abstraction of any sort, and everything about how darkies are natural slaves- doomed to 'Shudra Dharma' as Tagore put it. 

The truth about India is that it has evolved along juridical lines established under the Raj. Its political culture originated then and still has many of the same features. There is a 'sanyasi' tradition- represented by Modi and Adityanath. There is a 'Liberal' tradition represented by Economists and Jurists allied with different parties. There is an indigenous Marxist tradition which has its roots in Jugantar and Ghaddar and so forth. Gandhian nutjobs too exist and, like Anna Hazare, they may be called in to orchestrate a mass movement from time to time. However, it is the Caste Associations of the 1880s onwards which have had most salience. There are dynastic caste based parties which may have an ideological veneer dating back to the Nineteen Twenties. What is lacking is any Bengali nitwit marrying Hegel or Tagore so as to 'discourse on Identitty- i.e. nipples are many, titty is one' to kittens who may not look like either of those two pussycats of hers. 

Autocracy, the Russians liked to say, is tempered by Assassination. Gandhi insisted that all power be concentrated in his hands. It is no great surprise that three people named Gandhi, in whose hands power was concentrated or appeared to be so, were assassinated. In India, Caste abides. Autocracy withers and dies unless it is taking too long to so do in which case someone will always oblige with a bullet or a bomb.