Pages

Saturday, 5 September 2020

Vijaya & Biswas vs Indra Nooyi

Indians who have managed to escape India and to settle in the West like flaunting their higher status- which affects their, or their children's, marriage prospects and life chances- so as to humiliate and exert hegemony over Indians still stuck in India. This trait passes over to the Second Generation, but only if they are employed in Higher Education teaching worthless shite- in which case they are looked down on by both Westerners and dark skinned immigrants to the West who are making way more money or simply aren't as stupid and ignorant. 

One reason for this is that darkies from shithole countries gain 'intellectual affirmative action' in the Western Academy.  They are then employed to award homeopathic doses of Paideia, but attested to by inflated Credentials, to cretinous victims of epistemic self-abuse. Suppose you don't fall into this capacious category. You can't complain that your Professor is shit and can't speak proper English because that makes you a Racist. Anyway, you are a cretin, otherwise you would not be studying shite under a shite Professor in a shite University.

India should be proud that it exports shite Professors of shite subjects. Expelling shit is a good thing- though only assholes do it. India should be ashamed it did not export all its shite Professors. One result is that it must continue to shit out shite Professors upon crap Departments of Western Universities.

As a case in point, consider the following article in Scroll.in, by Ramya Vijaya, a Professor of Economics at Stockton University & Bidisha Biswas, a Professor of Political Science at Western Washington University.

In her new book, Caste, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson looks towards the Indian caste system to understand the stubborn persistence of racism in the US.

Wilkerson is being silly. America had a one drop rule. Thus it does not have the Mexican or other Latin American or Portuguese type caste system. Moreover, America does not have arranged marriage and an endogamous 'jati/biradari' solution to the 'stable marriage problem'. However, in India, Creed trumps Caste when it comes to endogamy. Indeed, Religion is powerful enough to redraw territorial boundaries. Caste is relatively innocuous.

Ackerloff, in his Nobel acceptance speech, said his study of Indian caste gave him the idea for 'efficiency wages'. An economist should have an economic theory of caste.  Vijaya has a shite theory of caste. This is because she is not an economist. She is a cretin regurgitating cretinous availability cascades for cretinous students. 

In a similar vein Indians, particularly in the diaspora, can look towards the recent soul searching over white racial privilege in the US in the wake the Black Lives Matter protests, to reflect on how caste-based segregation endures.

Very true! Patel policemen routinely gun down Sharmas on the streets. Vijaya herself insisted on being mentioned before Biswas because she is of higher caste not because Economists are superior to Political Scientists.  


The recent caste discrimination lawsuit launched against Cisco by the State of California has generated defensiveness among some in the Indian immigrant community with declarations of caste being a thing of the past and no longer a relevant influence on diasporic life.

Whereas the truth is that Patels on the police-force shoot Sharmas any chance they get.  

In our book Seeing White: An Introduction to White Privilege, we

we? Only Vijaya was co-author- along with two white ladies who whimpered in awe at their sublime privilege in getting to write a book with a honest to goodness darkie- that too one with an unpronounceable name. They give the following example of their thesis-

The problem with this story is that an African American woman might have said the same thing as the White lady. Melanin, or its lack, is irrelevant. The authors are deluded in their belief that the color of one's skin conditions expectations. Rather it is one's epistemic exposure or 'background beliefs' which are relevant. But these are shared by all with a similar upbringing and education. Americans are likely to have American values and beliefs no matter whether they are tall or short or fair skinned or dark skinned. 

 Furthermore, the fact is, plenty of Indians- myself included- have pickle with everything. When travelling, Hindu and Jain men, because of religious prohibitions of different types of food, carried pickle jars. This relish was used with all their meals. At home, the use of pickle is more sparing because of the greater variety of dishes. Thus the Indian American woman in this story might have made the same comment if she were married to an Indian man who had spent a lot of time travelling or living away from home in a region with few of his caste-fellows.

Incidentally, cucumbers are native to India and were pickled thousands of years ago. The type of lime pickle we now think of as normal in India is actually a recent innovation which occurred after the Portuguese introduced the American green and red chili. 

Things we take for granted may or may not be visible to us. Gender is something visible. Yet we take it for granted. Whiteness in America is visible as is Blackness and Gender. To some extent the same may be said for Sexuality. 

explored the seeming invisibility of whiteness; white Americans are not conscious of being white,

In the example quoted above, the 'white' lady was not actually being 'white'. She was being 'American'. An African American woman might have said the same thing. 

they perceive themselves and their experiences as the good, normal way of being.

Clearly these guys have never heard the expression 'Free, White, and Twenty One'. Nor have they heard of 'hyphenated-Americans' or 'White Trash' or 'Boston Brahmins'. They don't get that social stratification exists in every country. One reason people go to University is so as to alter the way they see themselves, they see the world, and the world sees them. 

Americans are conscious of where they fit into the social and racial hierarchy. Why? They are human beings. But some animal species too have an awareness of a 'pecking order'. The thing is not 'invisible' at all. Economists know that it is statistically testable. Political Scientists are aware that race, class, gender, education, age, etc. play a part in self-perceived identity. 

Religion plays a big part in the life of many Americans. They consider the 'good and normal' life to be the one held up as normative by their Religious Sect. That is why some homosexuals, instead of thinking of themselves as 'good and normal', pay money for 'conversion therapy'. 

Why are these two cretins arguing otherwise? Is it because they are cognitive coolies, epistemic untouchables, who escaped from a shithole country? Or is it because they are just as shit as other shite academics in shit University Departments?  

At the same time, they are hyper aware of other races and the ways in which people are not “white”.

The problem here is that Whites may beat up a White homosexual while idolizing a virile, heterosexual, African American sports star. 

Identity in an advanced Capitalist country is a complicated matter because the economic consequences of Identity are complicated. A white woman who 'passed' as a Professor of African American Studies may face worse consequences than an elderly 'one drop' Black Professor of Classics who, as in Phillip Roth's novel, is accused of being a Racist for using the word 'spooks'.  

In much the same way, upper caste experiences in the Indian diaspora are often thought of as the normal or good Indian immigrant success story.

Whereas ending up giving blowjobs at truck stops in between spells of incarceration is often thought of as abnormal and bad- more particularly if your name is Amartya Sen and you have tenure at Harvard. 

Why are people employed to empty bed-pans not considered to be role models whereas cardiac surgeons are celebrated? The answer is that surgeons get paid a lot of money.  They have to invest heavily in education. They must remain relatively sober or risk a ruinous malpractice suit. 

In a 2019 New York Times profile, Indira Nooyi the former chief executive of PepsiCo, a first- generation Indian immigrant often heralded for being one of the few high-profile female CEOs in the US, volunteered her caste identity. Her family, she mentioned “was a good, conservative Brahmin family, deeply steeped in learning and education. That was the only focus. The expectation was you would get, at a minimum, a master’s degree.”

Brahmin and Pariah are two words which have entered the English language. Brahmin has the connotation of being learned, sober, and high class. Nooyi, quite correctly, adverts to her family's high standing in these respects. She is saying, 'I am successful because my family was God fearing, Sober, Industrious and had a great veneration for Higher Education'. Another woman might have said 'my success is due to my Quaker background', or else 'my ancestors were Rabbis', or 'my parents attended Howard, like their parents before them'. It is right and proper to pay condign tribute to one's family if that is what helped you to rise. Nooyi, who went to my old school in T.Nagar, knows that Tamil Nadu has risen up because people of all castes and creeds have engaged in 'Tardean mimetics'. They have imitated those who invested in education for their kids. Sir Theagaraya Chetty, after whom T.Nagar is named, made it clear that non-Brahmins wanted to come up the same way as Brahmins. They had no hatred of them. This was further clarified by the A.D.M.K which ended up being led by a female Brahmin who was Chief Minister till she died recently. 


In openly proclaiming her upper caste identity,

She told the truth. But nobody in their right mind would think she got ahead in America because Americans reverence Tamil Brahmins. In other words, she- like her sister, Grammy nominee, Chandrika Tandon,- rose by merit. But that merit had a hereditary component. 

These two shitheads have no merit. They tell lies. 

she portrayed Brahminism in the same romanticised manner that some white Americans reminisce about the genteel, elegant and old-world charm of southern plantation life.

This is a stupid lie. Americans have a concept of 'Boston Brahmins', but Bostonians didn't own slaves. They were more likely to be Abolitionists. 

Suppose Indra Nooyi had risen because of her beauty and her charm. As a young debutante she married the heir to the Pepsi Cola fortune. Then her husband died and the CEO was incompetent and J.R Ewing tried to takeover Pepsi using underhand means. Indra is forced to take a seat upon the board. Using her feminine charms she wins over the head of the SEC who blocks Ewing's bid. Then Indra meets the Soviet leader at the White House. He becomes infatuated with her. She gets the sole right to sell Cola all over the vast territories of the Soviet Union. Then some Islamic terrorists kidnap her but she sings Dixie and tears come to their eyes and they find Christ and they release her.

Suppose all this was the case, then these two cretins would not be stupid, cretinous, liars.  

But the gentility of an old southern plantation lifestyle of course rested on the horrific extraction of wealth and profits from the slave labour of African Americans.

And the gentility of these two shitheads rests, of course, on the genocide and slavery which permitted the Universities where they teach to get the money to function. 

Now these worthless gobshites are pretending to be 'woke' and are hoping to jump on a bandwagon that is the exclusive property of African Americans and the First Nations. 

Nostalgia for the elegance of plantation owners not only represents an erasure of the brutality of slavery but also perpetuates a myth of refinement of white in contrast to the supposed lack of refinement of the non-white who were denied access to the means of refinement.

These cunts are using the fact that they managed to escape India to rub the noses of those still stuck in that shithole in the type of shite Scroll publishes for the foredoomed project of their upliftment to a level of equal stupidity.  

In the same way, the proclivity towards education is reflective of the Brahmin privilege of access to education,

But Tamil Brahmins had restricted access to higher education, especially in Medicine, which is why they turned to the private sector and emigrated in great numbers.  

a basic right that was explicitly forbidden to those belonging to the Dalit strata for several centuries.

But most Brahmins were illiterate! By contrast, some hereditary 'writer' and 'Doctor' castes were ritually low caste- or even Dalit- though they tended to rise in public esteem. Anyway, the education available at that time was as shite as the education these gobshite purvey.  

As a result, Brahmin households like Nooyi’s

of Sir Chetty's or, indeed, Dalit icons like M.C Raja's

often have access to long legacies of educated family members and extended networks that Dalit households with their much more recent access to education have never had the opportunity to build.

Some have. Most haven't. Tardean mimetics within endogamous sub-caste can cause rapid changes. The fact that the traditional occupation of Tamil Brahmins would not save them from starvation caused Tardean mimetics to operate in a counter-intuitive way. They embraced a Western Education which essentially said that everything they believed was shit. So they shifted the goal posts to the abstract fields of Mathematical Physics and Game theoretic Biology.  

In perpetuating the myth of a good Brahmin tradition of education,

So these two shitheads agree that there was no 'Brahmin tradition of education'. Them guys were ignorant and stupid. To pretend otherwise is to perpetuate a myth.  

Nooyi follows the same pattern of erasure and myth making of cultural superiority as southern whiteness.

No. She told the truth. These two cunts are telling stupid lies. But then they are useless wankers teaching worthless subjects. Nooyi did a proper job and she did it well. That is why we are interested in her but not interested in the crap these two cunts are flinging in our face.  


The Cisco case rests on this very same reflexive elevation of Brahmin access to educational networks.

But what about another case, also certified by the California Dept. on Employment and Housing discrimination, in which a 'Kappu Naidu' alleged that a 'Kamma Naidu' had harassed him on the basis of Caste? 

The Cisco case rests on the assertion that Dalits are darker in color and belong to a different race. But there are differences of color within sub-castes. A Reddy can sue another Reddy. In the UK a Pakistani Muslim Arain sued another Arain whom he alleged was a higher caste 'Chowdhury'. These two gobshites can be sued by any of their sub-continental students on the grounds of caste discrimination even if both belong to the lowest caste. Why? US law does not distinguish between which Race or Gender is supposed to be superior. A wealthy white man being boycotted by African American female janitorial staff can sue the Company and get big damages. Meanwhile very poor people working under horrible conditions get no help. Why? The Employer has deep pockets. The Government has shite lawyers. 

An Indian origin Dalit Cisco engineer complained about being denied professional opportunities by his Brahmin managers who became aware of his Dalit status.

Became aware? They knew each other from College.  

The managers’ bias, it seems, stemmed from the engineer’s admission to a prestigious engineering college in India on the basis of caste-based affirmative action rather than the caste-based Brahmin privilege of access to education.

This is the allegation of the complainant who certainly does have a private remedy against the Employer. The question is whether racial discrimination occurred. If the Court finds it has occurred, then any person from the sub-continent can sue his Employer any time he likes. Why? It would be easy to show that he is the only person who belongs to a particular sub-caste who is employed in that organization. Suppose I am one of 5 Vivek Iyers employed by Cisco. I am sacked for being drunk and not knowing shit about Computers. I sue. The other Iyers belong to different sub-sub-castes. I alone belong to the Viskey Venum Vadadesi Vadama subcaste.  

Nooyi or the Cisco managers are not alone; Indians in the diaspora often exhibit casual and unthinking pride in the ritualistic traditions of their upper castes families like thread ceremonies and certain dress codes, without a corresponding recognition of the exclusion and oppression it represents.

It is right and proper to take pride in one's own culture, family and religious traditions. Would these cunts dare to point a finger at Muslims for exhibiting 'casual and unthinking pride' in their traditions? How about orthodox Jews? What about Evangelical Christians- many of whom are African American? Is it not a fact that sober and religious people exclude drunken bums from entering their places of worship so as to provide blow-jobs in return for the price of a sandwich? Is it not oppressive to get the police to arrest nutters who turn up in the Church or the Mosque or the Synagogue to shout 'Hail Satan!'?

A growing recognition of the ongoing harm of such selective nostalgia has prompted a re-evaluation of the popular plantation wedding industry in the US that used to promote southern slave plantation houses as romantic sites for wedding celebrations in the genteel southern tradition.

There has also been a growing recognition that if you get a shit degree, taught by worthless gobshites, from shit Universities, then you are going to have a shitty life. You can blame this on 'genteel southern traditions' but only if you have large quantities of shit lodged where your brain should be. 

Hollywood star Ryan Reynolds recently apologised for having had such a plantation wedding. Similarly, the Indian upper caste diaspora,

should apologize for not saying 'Some American University Departments are completely shit. The Indians they hire have shit for brains. If you want to be successful, don't waste your money and time studying there. Do something useful with your life.'

particularly those in positions of power like Nooyi,

she now works in the non-profit sector. She must back vocational training rather than 4 year degrees for the great mass of Americans. She must denounce these cretins.  

must reflect on the harm their selective and unthinking memorialisation of upper caste family traditions of privilege cause those without the caste access.

These cretins are wrong. Nooyi should tell the truth about how she rose. It is a fact that families like hers- or like that of Kamala Harris's Mom- interpreted the Hindu religion in a certain way such that academic success in STEM subjects was seen as spiritually and morally worthwhile. This meant Tardean mimetics with epistemically superior targets. However, sobriety, discipline, sacrifice, were also required. Talking worthless shite helps nobody. It damages your brain.  


Reynold’s apology for a plantation wedding

should provide a model for these two shitheads own apology for joining an utterly useless profession which actively damages the life-chances of those upon whom it preys.  

is part of recent a wave of high-profile awakening on the cultural glorification of symbols of segregation in the US. Popular music bands like Dixie Chics and Lady Antebellum have recently accepted their unthinking complicity in elevating narratives of superiority by using words like “Dixie” and “Antebellum” that are related to a sense of pride in a pre-emancipation South. A similar history of names relates to the Indian caste system.

Which, however, is not related to slavery. The fact is ex-slaves- like the Harris family- have the surnames of the owners, who were often also progenitors, of their ancestors. 

Upper caste Hindus often use surnames that are caste names.

The reverse is the case. Sub-castes adopt occupational or other honorific names. Iyer, Patel, Singh, Choudhry, Thakur, Gupta etc are not specific enough to pick out a particular endogamous community. The truly privileged have territorial names. But this was also true of the European aristocracy.


The early 20th century Dravidian movement in Southern India led by anti-caste reformers like E Ve Ramaswamy (Periyar) actively campaigned against this practice as a way to create space for individual identity and self-respect as opposed to identities based on caste power. As a result, the use of caste names like Iyer and Iyengar receded for a time among the Tamil community in India. Yet the practice is common now particularly among diaspora Indians.

Why? Because it was administratively convenient if you had settled in Bombay or elsewhere. As an honorific 'aya' was added to one's name anyway. Our practice is to use the father's name as an initial, unless one is very posh in which case there is territorial component as well, while your given name stands in the place of surname.  The Justice Party and Periyar and so on wanted to get rid of the feudal system as adapted by the Colonialists. 

At one time my Dad thought we should change our surname once back in India. Then he saw there was no need. Nobody cares about such things anymore. 

In testimonies collected by the Ambedkar King Study Circle California, several Dalit immigrants mention discomfort with frequent probing of names among Indian community groups and colleagues in order to discern caste identity.

This is quite true. But, I notice, high caste people hate it when I do the same thing to them- more particularly if they are related to me. This is because much of my information about Indian castes is derived from American academics. Thus I say 'Joseph Campbell says that Iyers chop off the heads of their sons when visiting their Kuladevam shrine'. The kids naturally start howling. I say 'don't worry. Your parents are all acharabrashta. You stand in no danger'. The parents say- 'Vivek, we don't chop off the head of our sons. We just shave their hair as an offering to the Deity. You too underwent this ceremony. Why are you trying to scare our kids just when we have booked our holiday in Chennai?' 

Caste is an uncomfortable business. Few of us keep up all the old rituals and customs. 

Similar to the rethink over words like Dixie and Antebellum, those with upper caste Indian heritage must reflect on the culture of names that evoke caste dominance.

Why stop there? Why not just adopt American names? Embrace Christianity. Identify as a Cherokee. 

In her comparison of white racial privilege to caste privilege Wilkerson mentions that while attending academic conferences on caste in the US, she began to recognise South Asians from dominant castes by the way they seemed to have a “certitude of being,” a confidence about their place in life. It is this certitude that Indira Nooyi exhibited when she prefaced her comments about her family by saying “we never lacked for anything, but we didn’t have much.”

Having 'certitude of being' is a good thing. Be confident. Show pride in your family. If you look nervous and try to hide facts about your family, people will jump to the conclusion that you make your money giving b.js at truck-stops. Your parents were jail-birds. Your kids are in care.  


In openly proclaiming both her Brahminical identity as well as her lack of class privilege Nooyi and many successful upper caste Indians signal a story of individual achievement where caste privilege either no longer exists or is rapidly fading.

No. Nooyi is saying Brahmins are superior to most Americans. She was able to rise higher than natives because of something special about her background. Her people were not materialistic. They were not greedy. But they were achievement oriented. 

Why did Nooyi say this? The answer is because it was in her interest to do so. Stakeholders would say to themselves 'this lady is unlikely to embezzle money or sexually harass all and sundry. Her family tradition is to pursue virtue and excellence. True, she comes from a shithole country. But she is one of a small minority of smart and virtuous people in that shithole country. Once people like her get to America, they can rise on the basis of merit.'

What would a Dalit entrepreneur say? 'I come from an Ambedkarite family. Let me tell you about Dr. Ambedkar. He got a scholarship from an Indian Prince to Columbia. Instead of just getting a degree, he got a PhD in fiscal policy. His dissertation was so good, the British Parliament relied on it. He also got a PhD in monetary policy from the LSE. He simultaneously qualified as a barrister. This was back in 1920 when you could count the number of Black people with a Doctorate on the fingers of one hand! Ambedkar joined the Viceroy's Council at a young age. He helped draft the Indian Constitution. Since then two members of my caste have become President of India purely on the basis of intellectual merit and integrity of character. Since most of us are engaged in grass-roots reform, few of us are represented in the higher ranks of private enterprise. But this is a profit opportunity for Corporations! Make a point of hiring Dalits. They will rise by merit, not use intrigue based on a sense of entitlement'.

What do these two shitheads say? Be ashamed of who you are. Only Whiteness matters in America. Be invisible. Change your name. If people think you don't look White start talking about Ryan Reynolds and his plantation wedding. Try to pass as African American.

The trouble with this strategy is that white women who were discovered to be 'passing' for Black were mocked and derided. That is why honesty is the best policy. But, always put your best foot forward. If you are confident and proud of your family, people will have confidence in you. They will respect your family. 

Yet the same open declaration of lower class origins would not be possible for someone from a Dalit background without a fear of their achievements being diminished as the outcome of undeserving affirmative action as seems to have been the experience in the Cisco case.

These cretins are wrong. The reason the Dalit man complained is because he knew he was as good or better than his bosses. He has advertised this for the world to see.  How we can help the good cause is by saying that all graduates of IIT have to pass the same exams. They are equal in merit though there is a provision for disadvantaged students to get remedial classes so as to catch up.  

Concluding her exploration of caste and race, Wilkerson mentions that racial privilege will continue to persist unless every one examines the ways they feed into the structure of white dominance in small and large ways through everyday actions.

Wilkerson is wrong but Wilkerson represents a venerable tradition within American discourse. It is wrong to try to jump on that bandwagon on the basis of having a dusky skin. These two cretins, or their parents, leveraged some degree of privilege within India to get the fuck away from that shithole. Now they are angling for 'affirmative action' by pretending they have some salience in a global battle against some shite or the other. 

Similarly upper caste Indian immigrants must reconcile an awareness of the structural privileges they have inherited even as they find ways to celebrate their personal successes and family histories.

This is what these two tossers refuse to do. Their parents may have emigrated on the basis of useful skills. Their sense of entitlement is so grotesque, they engage in 'extractive introjection'- unconscionably appropriating the psychic pain of oppressed people so as to virtue signal and gain 'affirmative action' for themselves. 

Shame on these stupid cretins! Where is Indra Nooyi and where are they? 


No comments:

Post a Comment