He says ' A mutinous Brahmin is still a Brahmin – this is precisely how the apparently meritocratic agency of Brahmanical privilege works (and partly explains how the privileged routinely usurp the vanguard in any advocacy for justice). A Dalit faculty member in my position would likely have lost her job.' He understates the case. If Brahmins really do conspire together to advance their own careers they would want those of their members with genuine intelligence to quit Academia- where the monetary rewards are small- and go into the private sector. They should be setting up companies that can grow rapidly- like Infosys. They shouldn't be teaching nonsense to retards unless they are themselves utter retards. Ved Mehta tells the story of the headmaster of the School for the Blind he attended in India. The gentleman in question came from a good family. But he was illiterate. Thus his father got him a job where he would not be required to write anything on the blackboard. Some similar phenomenon appears at work when we consider the Deepak Malghans and Divya Dwiwedis of the world.
Malghan attended Princeton. Did he study mathematics or physics? Perhaps. But he couldn't contribute to such disciplines. So his PhD is in worthless shite. Affirmative action programs were useful to University administrators who couldn't sack cretins with tenure and thus could only turn a profit on them by supplying them with ignorant students from the ghettos or from shithole countries.
Malghan writes-
Elite Indian institutions urgently need to examine institutions of Brahmanical privilege masquerading as meritocracy. Who in their right mind would want to teach at IIM or IIT? Good quality students from those institutions want to earn 2 lakh dollars, not Rupees, a month and many of them end up with far more thanks to share options. Privilege is about money. It isn't about being a fucking teacher.
The fount of my own “merit” is the generous diversity and affirmative action program at Princeton.
But Princeton didn't hire Malghan. But then no academic gig in America pays as well as the sort of job a smart graduate from IIM or IIT can get in that country.
I was able to attend Princeton not only because of my accumulated caste privilege secularised in a Nehruvian public sector industrial township,
i.e. he was good at cramming and regurgitating stupid shit so as to get out of that shithole. By contrast, non-Nehruvian, non-secular, 'industrial townships' are places where young people can grow rich by going into business. Dr. Ambedkar saw that the Dalit millionaires of Kanpur could provide finance, if not leadership, for the Jatav community. Thanks to Nehruvianism- 'export pessimism' etc- that 'Manchester of India' is now a stagnant shithole. The fact is, India should have provided soft loans for Dalits millionaires in the leather trade to grown their business and gain export markets. They were welcome to bring in foreign experts- e.g. the Czechs who set up Bata- but the industry should have been Dalit dominated. That would have broken the back of the caste system in U.P. The alternative, which Dr. Ambedkar himself embraced, was conversion to Buddhism- i.e. if economic upliftment was off the table because of stupid Leftist ideology, then the second best course was religious and spiritual.
but also because as a brown-skinned applicant, I helped Princeton tick its diversity box.
Yes. Princeton was pretending this guy's ancestors had picked cotton in between being lynched by the Ku Klux Klan. Biden is hoping to palm off Kamala, whose Dad's family owned slaves, as a pickaninny who grew up watching the strange fruit borne by Southern trees.
but, because they were as stupid as shit, they couldn't get well paid jobs in management. Thus they now merely teach kids some of whom will get those well paid jobs.
While it is not wholly accurate to characterise the caste structure as an “empire,”
and share my broad trajectory. Diversity quotas for brown-Brahmins at Princeton is just dessert.
The cretin means 'just deserts'. Just dessert is the sweet you end your meal with.
Reservation quotas in Indian institutions designed to acknowledge, if not substantively address, millennia of continuous marginalisation, subjugation, and dispossession is, however, a frontal assault on academic “merit.”
What 'academic merit' does this cretin have? If he is your teacher, you will become more, not less, stupid and ignorant. You will end up babbling about 'just dessert' instead of 'just deserts'.
my teachers at Princeton taught me, empires are most effectively challenged by men and women who have effectively mastered the “metropolitan language.”
not by cretins who say 'just dessert' when they mean 'just deserts'. Sadly, nobody at Princeton told this fool that India is not an Empire. It is a Republic. What language does Modi speak? Gujarati. His Hindi too is quite good. But his English is merely functional.
The history of anti-colonial struggles around the world is testimony to this elementary fact.
No it isn't. Empires preferred to transfer power to leaders who spoke the metropolitan language and were not outright ooga-booga cannibals. But those leaders were not able to seize power by themselves. The exception is Ho Chi Minh. Sukarno wasn't much cop.
Gandhi, Ambedkar, Nehru, Lohia, Jayprakash Narayan all studied at some of the finest western institutions.
But their education had no bearing whatsoever on their popularity. Dr. Ambedkar was not known as an economist. The fact is Indian lawyers who never bothered to 'eat dinners' at any Inn of Court outclassed the 'acharabrashta' ones that did so.
While it is not wholly accurate to characterise the caste structure as an “empire,”
It is foolish.
the self-preservation instincts of entrenched privilege is at the heart of exclusionary structures in contemporary Indian universities.
Which is why they are crap. If Professors were any good, then students would soon discover they were relatively stupid and hopelessly behind the times. That's what motivates students to quit academy and go to where the smart people are. Only if the Professor is completely useless and babbles about just dessert will students give the fellow the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he did learn something at Princeton but won't share it with his students because they have not given him a suitable bribe.
Ambedkar’s clarion call, often interpreted as his life’s message, was to “educate, organize, and agitate.”
And then found a new sect of Buddhism and thus become a Boddhisattva though remaining married to a Brahmin lady.
Any mobilisation around “Dalit Lives Matter” must necessarily
be a case of monkey see, monkey do. Whatever happened to the Dalit Panthers?
forge an organic relationship with “DalitsInTheIvory.”
India has no Ivory Towers. Red brick- perhaps. White tile- sure. But most campuses smell of piss.
It is also for this reason that institutions embedded in a (Brahmanical) privilege network will resist all attempts at democratising university spaces.
It is also for this reason that institutions embedded in a (Brahmanical) privilege network will resist all attempts at democratising university spaces.
They were democratized long ago. The Professors are stupider and more ignorant than the students. The reason this cretin was hired was because people thought his English would be okay coz he lived in Amrika. Then they got their just dessert.
Exclusionary “upper” caste symbols enjoying institutional imprimatur mirrors the faux defence of Confederate monuments in the American South as symbols of a bucolic “southern heritage.”
What is the point of studying at Princeton if you don't learn basic grammar? Symbols may mirror things. They can't 'mirrors' anything. I suppose what this fellow is getting at is that IIM is forcing him to wear janeo- which is what Rahul Baba wears. Furthermore Bangalore is in South India. This is a very suspicious circumstance. Southern heritage is being forced on Deepak- who is from a Nehruvian secular industrial town. True, the V.C is not forcing Deepak to eat watermelon and sing Camptown races. But, in an occult manner, they are forcing him to wear a white hood and to burn crosses all over the place.
It is foolish to compare a very poor country like India with America. We want to emigrate to the States even if we will face a lot of discrimination there. Whatever sins the Americans committed in the past, the fact is they are top dog now because those sins were sensible from the economic point of view.
For the overwhelming majority in India, the janeu is as much a symbol of exclusion and subordination as a statue of Robert Lee is for African Americans.
India was ruled by Muslims, not Brahmins. There is substantial anti-Muslim sentiment but very little anti-Brahmin sentiment even in T.N. Jayalalitha was a Brahmin.
Modern universities as sites of democratic thought are also despised by authoritarian regimes of every stripe.
Modern universities as sites of democratic thought are also despised by authoritarian regimes of every stripe.
China and Singapore have 'modern universities' which have steadily climbed the academic league tables. They are not 'sites of democratic thought'. Nor were Soviet universities which produced first rate mathematicians, physicists etc. India does have plenty of universities which are shit. But shit does not represent any type of thought. It is something produced by assholes whether or not they went to Princeton.
The current ruling dispensation in India is no exception. An authoritarian regime’s task is made easier in India by a middle class that is defined entirely by its station in a consumptive network.
Consumptive means 'suffering from a wasting disease- e.g pulmonary tuberculosis'. A middle class is defined by its income and material standard of living. I suppose this cretin means 'consumption ranking'.
However, a project of exclusionary nationalism on behalf of its core upper caste constituency cannot succeed should the underclass actually “educate, organize, and agitate.”
and fuck up the country till the Afghans invade and Muslims carve out kingdoms from its territory as they did in the good old days.
Universities represent some of the most fecund sites available for such a fraternal project.
Universities represent some of the most fecund sites available for such a fraternal project.
A University which employs guys from Princeton, that too to teach a 'soft' subject, who can't write English properly is a fucking waste of time. Why waste the tax payer's money on places like this? Defund the racket!
The future of India as a constitutional democratic republic hinges on how liberty, equality, and fraternity are forged on its university campuses.
No. It depends on having an Army and police force which can prevent Democracy from being overthrown. This means collecting more by way of tax revenue which in turn entails raising productivity which requires labor, land acquisition, and agricultural reform. More and more jobless graduates babbling about 'just dessert' won't help us any.
Indian institutions, and especially elite technocratic campuses, must urgently begin a “truth and reconciliation” process that includes a transparent and honest reckoning with how they have wilfully supported structures of exclusion for decades.
No. They have to admit that a lot of stuff they teach is nonsense and the stuff which isn't nonsense is taught by credentialized cretins who simply recycle their old lecture notes. It must be said that the Left has been very successful in creating 'citation cartels' across international borders. Thus, it makes sense to hire stupid leftists because their worthless papers get published and cited more often. The other side of the coin is that the left has gotten lazy and has given up on alethic research or the use of advanced mathematical techniques. Thus the overall prestige of the 'Liberal Arts' has fallen steeply. As for econometrics- it is just 'drive by regression'.
However, history also teaches us that universities need prodding and nudging from the outside.
However, history also teaches us that universities need prodding and nudging from the outside.
They need funding cuts to have an incentive to reform themselves. Sadly, this means more overpaid administrators and a more intensive exploitation of Teaching Assistants.
An institution like Princeton was until not long ago a hedge fund for the 1% (white) elite that also granted diplomas on the side.
That's why it could afford to employ the likes of Einstein and Godel. Now, its 'wokeness' means it can boast of Deepak as a typical alumnus. This is its 'just dessert'.
What will it take Indian institutions to begin engaging with questions of caste justice like how Princeton has done with race justice?
India having the same per capita Income as the US. That's what it would take. Once you are rich and powerful you can do stupid shit to your heart's content.
Do we have institutional leaders in India with the moral vision to confront this question that has haunted India through millennia – from Ekalavya through Rohit Vemula?
Ekalavya was a Prince. Vemula's father was OBC and thus he could not benefit from SC reservations. The fool switched from hard science to 'sociology'. Thus he would be unemployable in the private sector. Then he topped himself. Sad.
Under Manmohan there was a theory that increasing the number of PhDs- even those in useless shit- would fool the world into thinking India had greater growth potential. But nobody was fooled. A nuisance had been created. It must now be curbed. Only fund Higher Education where a skills shortage exists such that a productivity bottleneck is removed. Let the Deepaks of the world return to America and do their agitating there. The fact is, he espouses a hate ideology which, sooner or later, is going to lay him, and his employers, open to prosecution in Indian courts. Consider the following article he published in the Wire-
The National Overseas Scholarship Scheme (NOS) of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment provides funding for students from SC, ST and landless agricultural labourer families to pursue postgraduate education (masters and doctoral levels) at top-ranked universities outside India. This scholarship programme has been operating for nearly seven decades, starting in 1954.
With a modest annual budget (of under Rs 20 crore per year in 2021), NOS seeks to award scholarships to 100 students (increased to 125 this year of which 115 are earmarked for Scheduled Caste students). However, in the past six years, only about 50-70 students have been awarded these scholarships (the annual reports from the Ministry of Social Justice do not account for the fact that a significant fraction of the provisional awards does not translate into a final disbursement of the scholarship, as shown in the Table insert).
Table: Number of Final NOS Award Letters issued between 2016-17 to 2021-22
2021-22 2020-21 2019-20 2018-19 2017-18 2016-17
Male 28 51 32 30 47 30
Female 11 22 14 20 18 16
Total 39 73 46 50 65 46
Source: Information obtained under RTI by Mr A. Meshram.
Why does Deepak not give figures for what obtained earlier? The answer is provided by the Economic Times- From 19 scholarship awardees who travelled abroad for post-graduation and research in 2015-16, the number rose to 63 by 2019-20 and hit 123 in 2021-22.
Most of these scholarships are for STEM subjects. I think it is only worthwhile to apply if you know which Institute in India you want to do research in. Otherwise, for good candidates, it is better not to accept a Government scholarship and to rely on loans plus stipends from the target institution. In fast changing fields, having the flexibility to change institutions can make the difference between doing cutting edge work as opposed to pursuing a moribund research program.
As per the Ministry of External Affairs, about 5.53 lakh Indian students study abroad. Compared to this, the normative target of the NOS programme is a mere 100 students (or, as two chemical engineers would have it, 180 parts per million or ppm). The poor design of the programme and an ambivalent commitment implementation, along with impractical exclusion criteria, results in a final number that is closer to 40 ppm. For example, any MPhil student drawing a modest scholarship at a public institution will likely cross the income threshold for the NOS programme. We have had our students wait a year without a scholarship stipend to become eligible for the NOS programme.
The limit for family income is 8 lakhs per year. MPhil students would be getting less than a lakh. What puzzles me is how a stipend-less student could survive for a year without taking employment. But, if they did take employment surely they would earn more than the stipend amount? You may laugh at me for my naivete. Indian postgrads are less employable than school leavers. But surely that's a bad thing? If you can't earn more than your stipend after getting your qualification, what is the point of getting an even higher qualification? Deepak supplies the answer. The clique which helped you get the scholarship will get you an academic job back home. In other words, you will help perpetuate a vicious circle of stupidity and ignorance in the name of 'activism'.
Until last year, the NOS scholarship programme supported students in all major disciplines. However, the new guidelines issued this year exclude “[t]opics/courses concerning Indian [c]ulture/heritage/[h]istory/[s]ocial studies on India.”
By contrast, America encourages its students to go study English in Timbuctoo. German students refuse to study German literature in Heidelberg. They receive generous financial assistance to study Goethe in a brothel in Bangkok.
Further, the final decision as to which topic falls under these categories “will rest with Selection-cum-Screening Committee of NOS.” This sudden change was made just two months before the final application deadline and comes as a crushing blow to those hoping to avail these scholarships for the coming academic year.
How sad! Consider the case of Sushila X. She was hoping to study Kannada at Cambridge. Now Modi Sarkar has cruelly dashed her hopes and dreams. How will she be able to communicate with her own beloved grandmother who can only speak Kannada?
Two students from our home institution have secured admissions from top-ranked universities in the UK and were hoping to fund their doctoral education using NOS scholarship.
Those 'top-ranked universities' have been forced to accept any foreigner who can pay because of the cruel policies first introduced by Thatcher which have been continued by successive administrations. Sadly, British Dalits don't enjoy the same privilege as Indian Dalits. They have to take out loans to fund their education. That's why they only study useful stuff and thus have become an affluent community.
The ministry held no public consultation before taking such a drastic decision. It is pertinent to note here that when NOS programme began in 1954-55, it was restricted only to science, technology, and engineering fields. Humanities and social sciences were added in 2012.
Because Manmohan and Montek were hoping to hoodwink foreigners into thinking that the increased number of PhDs represented the removal of a bottleneck even if those PhDs were in useless shit. Nobody was fooled.
When a 2006 Parliamentary Standing Committee questioned the rationale behind this exclusion, the ministry’s response was that “subjects, where adequate facilities are available in India, are not included in the list of subjects for the overseas scholarship.” This argument assumes that the only reason students from historically marginalised communities want to pursue their education abroad is because of better facilities abroad.
Everybody wants to study in an affluent country because they hope to stay on there or at least have that option.
It is not uncommon for scholars from historically marginalised groups to endure explicit and implicit caste discrimination on Indian campuses.
Whereas, in Australia, they never get the shit kicked out of them by the locals. If Indians- who are dark skinned- want to go to Yurop & Amrika it must mean Black Lives Matter a lot there. Only if India becomes more prosperous will Indians get better treatment at home.
Obtaining a PhD degree from an overseas institution offer better chances of securing faculty positions at elite Indian institutions.
Unless your PhD is in something useful- in which case, like Purnendu Chatterjee, you become a billionaire. Even if your PhD is in something useless, if you are best in class at that useless shite, you can get a reasonably well paid gig in America which is where you should settle if you want your daughter to have a chance of becoming, if not President, then at least Veep. Elite Indian institutions are still...well...Indian. If your Prof cares about you, he will be advising you on how to get the fuck out of India after your Masters.
Above all, a foreign degree offers a potential escape from the ‘lack of merit’ insinuation that scholars from marginalised communities endure daily (even when a scholar has not availed reservation benefits).
Fuck off! It is obvious that a guy who scored 60 percent for his Masters and then received a Govt. Scholarship to study some useless shit at a foreign university- where his Professors would have tip-toed around him coz they knew he was 'untouchable'- will not be considered to have any fucking merit whatsoever. That's why, if he does have merit, he tries his best to get out of the conditions of his scholarship (in the old days this involved having to work in India for some period of years) so as to escape to where his merit would be appreciated. On the other hand, there were plenty of high caste Indians with foreign degrees who felt stifled in India. Accepting a Govt. of India scholarship turned out to have been a career destroying mistake. Gayatri Spivak and Amartya Sen preferred to finance their own hegira to the West. The result is they could pursue whatever subject they liked. If Spivak had been a GoI scholar, she'd have had to stick to teaching Yeats. The world would not know her name.
This new restriction is not surprising, coming from a dispensation that has consistently displayed utter contempt and scorn for rigorous social sciences and humanities scholarship.
But we all feel that way because that shite aint 'rigorous' at all. What Prashant Kishor does is rigorous. What Pratap Bhanu Mehta does is loose motion.
However, the cowardice that lurks behind the muscular and exclusionary nationalism from the annals of “entire political science” cannot fully account for why Dalit and Adivasi students have been unfunded.
Deepak does not read over what he writes. Nor do the editors at the Wire. What this cretin means is ' However, the cowardice of a 'muscular nationalism' which seeks to exclude the entirety of political science from eligibility for scholarships cannot account for why Dalit students are not being funded.' This is still a meaningless sentence because Deepak has provided the explanation in the same sentence. Nationalism is cowardly. It does not want to fund Dalit students who wish to study 'political science' because it is afraid of what those Dalits students will do to it. Deepak does not explicitly say that Dalit students who have studied Gramsci will beat Nationalism and then take down its trousers and sodomize it while raising slogans of an anti-National type. However, as a Brahmin, Deepak certainly hopes this will be his own fate. Sadly, Dalit students are not doing the needful. This is because Nationalism is very cowardly and mean. Kindly fund Dalit students so they can go to Princeton and learn how to properly sodomize Deepakji!
In recent months, an assertive Dalit middle class in the United States and elsewhere have forced institutions to recognise the pernicious consequences of India’s caste hierarchy. A Fortune 500 corporation has been sued for abetting caste discrimination, and several major universities have started to incorporate caste as a protected category.
This is very very cool. Mr. Iyer can now get public funds to sue Miss. Iyengar. Why she is only having sex with Iyengars? It is due to caste discrimination innit? Come to think of it a 'Kappu Naidu' sued some other type of Naidu for caste discrimination in California. In the UK, a Pakistani Arain sued another Arain who, however, had the surname 'Choudhry'. Interestingly, there is a type of South Indian Brahmin who becomes a Pariah in the afternoon. This guy can sue himself for actions he took in the morning. This is a gift to Hindu lawyers. Furthermore, Brahmins can now sue cunts like Deepak for hate speech because they are now a 'protected group'. It doesn't matter that he himself is a Brahmin by birth. What matters is that he is stigmatizing a specific, easily identified, group of people whom the law has recognized as constituting a 'caste' with certain statutory rights.
The Dalit intelligentsia abroad has been at the forefront of making a case for why “Dismantling Global Hindutva” will not succeed without first dismantling Global Brahmanism.
While, at home, the President is Dalit. The RSS has become a golden road to social mobility for Dalits and Adivasis. There is only one African lineage legislator in India. It is no accident that he belongs to the BJP.
This same Dalit diaspora has also exposed how “upper” caste students almost wholly corner diversity and affirmative action policies at US institutions that benefit Indians.
Why the fuck are Indians getting affirmative action in the US? Are they pretending their ancestors plucked cotton in the Deep South?
This hegemony is especially complete in the social sciences and humanities.
Which are utterly useless. Prashant Kishor studied statistics. He is now the king-maker of Indian politics. Come to think of it, Deepak too started off in engineering. Then he got woke and his brains turned to shit.
Any roster of the most successful Indian origin scholars in these fields is dominated by those who have used familial ties in the upper echelons of the Indian bureaucracy to produce the research that propelled them to academic stardom.
Deepak is writing this in the Wire which is run by American citizen Siddhartha Varadarajan whose Dad was a famously corrupt IAS officer.
The vocal Dalit diaspora has exposed these Brahmanical guild networks that are only rarely acknowledged by entrenched Indian origin scholars with gatekeeping powers at leading global institutions.
Fuck off! The Dalit diaspora is doing well for itself in business and the professions. It does not give a toss for 'Brahminical guilds' in worthless subjects. On the other hand, I noticed they were very quick to organize against discriminatory actions by Indian Banks or bureaucrats or anything of that sort. This did not involve being 'vocal'. It involved being smart.
The problem with a minority attacking a 'guild network' of the majority is that it helps that guild thrive and gain more support from that majority.
When pitting themselves against White privilege,
Who the fuck is against 'White privilege'? We like Whites. Sonia was fully White and she could have been a three term P.M. Indians want to get to countries ruled by White peeps. They may work and live in Africa but they would rather have a British passport than be the subject of some African despot.
there is always studied amnesia around Brahmanical privilege that launched their own ascent.
Very true! Rahul Baba was always challenging Mummy's White Privilege. But he is not challenging his own Brahminical privilege. Indeed, he is wearing jaeneo! Deepakji is very angry about this. He should write to Cambridge University and demand that they strip Rahul of his M.Phil for daring to visit temple and wear sacred thread.
The Dalit diaspora has also been at the forefront of shining the spotlight on the near-complete Brahmanical stranglehold on elite Indian institutions.
What about shitty Indian institutions? Do Brahmins have a stranglehold on them as well?
At our own Indian Institutes of Management, we estimate that at least 80% of all faculty members are drawn from just two “upper” caste groups representing less than 7% of India’s diverse population. At our home institution (IIM Bangalore), a Brahmin faculty member runs a private youtube channel with “satsangs” produced using public institution facilities. A confident Bahujan scholar trained in the best global institution poses a threat to this hegemony.
How? Will he set up a youtube channel dedicated to Kabir bani? That would be cool. I have to admit that Abida's Kabir is my favorite. Come to think of it Indra Nooyi's sister- also a very successful entrepreneur- has issued some very good devotional CDs. An IIM which also nurtures this type of music gains respect and credibility for its alumni. Companies want to hire god-fearing managers. They don't want to hire nutters who wish to destroy Capitalism so as to end White privilege or so as to protest the fact than men have dicks.
An essential strategy in any fascist toolkit is to wear down the dissenters.
Fuck off! Fascists kill dissidents and anybody who looks like they may one day become a dissidents and then it just kills a lot more peeps to be on the safe side. Deepak thinks that Gestapo's main tactic was to wear people down by showing them Hitler's holiday snaps.
Amid more frontal assaults on the founding principles of the Indian republic, it is easy to gloss over an innocuous-looking government circular impacting no more than perhaps a couple of dozen students. However, this would be a huge mistake.
in the opinion of a huge pile of shite.
The most successful challenges to modern empires have come from individuals and groups that mastered the “language” of the empire.
Fuck off. The Taliban hasn't mastered English. The Mujahideen didn't learn Russian. Giap and Ho Chi Minh did learn French at school but the guys who threw out the French and, later, the Americans, did not speak French or English.
A Gandhi,
who recruited soldiers for the Brits during the First War
an Ambedkar
who was on the Viceroy's Executive Council during the Second War
or a Nehru
who described himself as the last Englishman to rule India
all studied in the metropolitan centres of the empire.
But so did many of the Raj's most stalwart Indian supporters.
A generation of Bahujan scholars empowered to question centuries of domination and subjugation presents an existential threat to the Brahmanical empire – an empire that this regime is sworn to preserve at all costs.
Coz Mayawati was educated at Princeton- right? The fact is not a single important Dalit politician- i.e. a guy who keeps getting re-elected and who has to be taken into the Cabinet and who is capable of becoming C.M- was educated abroad. Ambedkar was a political failure. Jagjivan Ram was a political success.
Who will Brahmins in UP- where they are numerically strong- vote for in this election? One thing we can be sure of. It won't be for janeo-dhari Rahul. The choice is between a Rajput and a Yadav.
The history of modern India was altered because the Baroda State funded Ambedkar’s studies at Columbia University.
Why did the Gaikwad do so? The answer is that he wanted to bring in Ambedkar (as Military Secretary) to push for reform and break a high caste nexus in the administration. Previously, a South Indian Maratha had been brought in to break the power of the Jagirdars and restore the solvency of the State. However, the timid 'babus' in the State administration were able to organize a bad reception for Ambedkar. The local Parsis chucked him out of a Parsi hostel. Ambedkar does not explain that they only did this because they were afraid that local clerks would make trouble for them if they did not take this irreligious action. But his readers- unless they are Deepak level stupid- understood well enough. I may mention the Gaekwad had also patronized Aurobindo because he wanted to develop an alliance with the Bengali Nationalists.
I am aware that Ambedkar may be viewed as siding with the Brits (and later the Muslims) in the Thirties. But this was only because Gandhi was an utter cretin who delayed independence by 20 years. Had he not unilaterally surrendered in 1922, India would have got what Ireland and Afghanistan and Egypt got at that time. Gandhi demanded that the Brits transfer control of the Army and the administration to the INC. His argument was that it, and it alone, represented India. No wonder, Govind Vallabh Pant said 'Italy has its Il Duce, Germany has its Fuhrer, India has Mahatma Gandhi'. Ambedkar was being perfectly sensible when he opposed that maha-crackpot. On the other hand, Mandal's allying with the League was a catastrophic mistake.
Our rulers cannot and will not risk another Ambedkar rising.
Don't be silly. Prakash Ambedkar is useful for splitting the vote in some constituencies. His brother-in-law, Teltumbde is rotting in jail. Nobody cares precisely because the fellow is a Professor.
For this very reason, our finest public institutions have been under constant attack – sometimes literally.
Because they are controlled by a 'Brahmin guild'- right?
Rohith Vemula’s poignant suicide note represents a mortal threat to the Brahmanical empire.
So a few more such suicides will definitely put an end to the thing. The Indian Union Muslim League certainly seems to have thought it worthwhile to offer Rohith's money 20 lakhs to build a house days after her son killed himself.
She told Altnews
Vemula's mother came out against CAA which turned out to be a godsend for AAP and the BJP. Congress and the Left were wiped out in the Delhi polls. Thus, Rohith did not die in vain. We can only hope that Deepak follows that illustrious savant's sterling example.
It occurs to me that the reader might think I am being unfair to Deepak. His views on America may be sound. His English, when writing about Western topics may be grammatical. Only when he writes about India does he come across like an illiterate crack-pot. After all, it's all just pearls before swine- right?
Let us now look at an article of his from two years ago. It it equally shit?
US President Donald Trump’s response to the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement is easily denounced for what it really is – a patently racist backlash tuned to consolidate his white nationalist base, and convert real and perceived grievances into a polarising “us versus them” pivot of his faltering reelection campaign.
How is this a 'denunciation'? It is the natural extension of a 50 year old 'Southern Strategy'. Indeed, it has continued to pay off for Trump personally. He is reasserting control over the Republican party.
However, the Black Lives Matter movement has not only rattled Trump and his ilk,
it was manna from heaven for them- more particularly those who opposed lockdown.
but also the liberal gatekeepers of elite cultural institutions that are nearly as white and as unrepresentative as the Trumpian coterie.
Sadly, it appears highly representative of half of the landmass- the demographically declining half.
This moment of reckoning with the US’s founding sin
declaring independence from Britain though Lord Dunmore had offered freedom to slaves who escaped their masters and joined the British forces.
has made the liberal intelligentsia uncomfortable by forcing them to engage with not only fraught race relations but also to introspect over the sources of their own privilege and cultural domination.
which they want to preserve. That's why the choice facing American voters was an elderly Trump and an even older Biden. Incidentally, Kamala was so radical that both Donald and Ivanka contributed to her first run for office.
In a remarkable letter published earlier this week in Harper’s Magazine, over 150 leading cultural luminaries including academics, writers, and journalists call for a reexamination of how institutions “in a spirit of panicked damage control,” have apparently driven a wedge between “justice and open debate.’’
These were guys who had been 'cancelled' for one reason or another.
They cite several examples including leading editors that have been eased out for publishing opinions not congruent with the BLM moment. The heavyweight signatories include such household names as J.K. Rowling,
who was in trouble with Trans activists
renowned literary figures such as Salman Rushdie
not loved by Muslims
who have faced personal persecution on account of what they have written, and polymaths like Noam Chomsky who have for long been intellectual beacons of social movements around the world.
Failed social movements or ones which were a terrible fucking idea- sure.
Irrefutable argument
Even without the stellar cast of authors that includes several people of colour, it is hard to take umbrage with a letter
take umbrage at or take issue with
that makes an entirely irrefutable argument
The argument is easily refuted by all sorts of deontological and utilitarian considerations.
that the “restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation.”
This is nonsense. Debates on how best to kidnap and rape kiddies are highly restricted.
Indeed, it is axiomatic that justice can only thrive in a culture of “open debate”.
Nonsense! Justice can only thrive if some matters are justiciable such that debate is 'buck stopped'- i.e. there is a protocol bound method by which the matter is closed by a judicial decision which has the force of law.
However, braiding justice, liberty and freedom together is necessarily messy.
No. Imperative statements are not 'messy' because they are not concerned with facts.
The kinks in this braid, and especially the missing strands, have not always been visible to even the best exponents of “detached” scholarship and “irreverent” writing that dominate our academic and literary landscapes.
In which case they will be even more invisible to this shitty exponent of bogus scholarship.
The Black Lives Matters movement has forced cultural elites to pause and take note of how the (in)justice and (un)freedoms that mark the lived reality of the subordinated diverge from axiomatic theories of justice or freedom.
There are no such 'axiomatic' theories. Why? Because 'justice' or 'freedom' would have to be a Tarskian primitive. There can be an 'axiomatic approach' to 'Justice as Fairness' or 'Freedom as unrestricted choice absent externalities, non-convexities, imperfect information etc. But such approaches quickly fall apart because of impredicativity or reliance on Zorn's lemma which in turn means an existence proof may be inaccessible save 'at the end of Time'.
Justice and freedom are not threatened so much by the fact that protesters in the Black Lives Matter movement lack table manners, as by the fact that for far too long the marginalised have not been allowed a place at the table.
By definition, a guy who has a seat at the table is not 'marginalized'. Deepak may think Trump has swell table manners. We prefer to believe he eats Big Macs while sitting on the toilet while Rudy Giuliani kneels beside him sniffing his farts appreciatively.
Why has the elite liberal discourse not been able to distinguish between etiquette and exclusion?
For the same reason it has not been able to distinguish between good table manners and shitting copiously into the soup tureen while your fellow diners watch in horror. The fact is, in discussing etiquette, some 'implicit' or 'background' knowledge' is assumed. If you are being told in which direction to pass the port, the assumption is that you already understand that you should not micturate in the decanter unless, of course, you are a Knight of Malta and the person sitting next to you is the Pope. What? I went to St. Columba's. My friend, Anthony Fernandes told me all about Catholicism- indeed, his Mummy was the Pope- and he promised to get me into Pope School if I gave him all my Superman comics.
Incarcerated by the Fascists, the Italian political theorist, Antonio Gramsci famously answered this question in his Prison Notebooks.
Gramsci contributed to the rise of Mussolini. Occupying factories was a bad idea. So was being in Moscow as the Black Shirts marched on Rome. Why? The Bolsheviks had already turned their country into a blood-boltered shambles. Soon Stalin would take control and things would get much much worse. Fascism only existed because what the Commies were up to was so utterly horrible.
Why did Gramsci and his ilk fuck up so badly? The answer is that they thought the big landlords were allying with the urban petit bourgeois so as to prevent land reform. The industrial bourgeoisie would grow restive with Mussolini's stupidity and then ally with the proletariat who, of course, would soon slit their throats and take over their nice shiny factories. Gramsci was foolish enough to publish an article to this effect. Obviously, the Italian capitalists kept tabs on stuff like that and thus were forewarned against the Commie strategy. Thus they lined up firmly behind the Fascists and soon the Papacy too fell in line.
Gramsci conceived of intellectuals most broadly as “organisers of culture.” His celebrated distinction between “traditional,” and “organic” intellectuals helps make sense of our own contemporary conundrums.
Nonsense! Italy had low literacy in 1920. The term 'duality' in Development Econ was first used for Italy because its modern sector was quite small and localized.
One of the few good things Musso did was get kids to attend school and also to encourage industrialization in the South. This meant that more jobs for teachers and lecturers and engineers and so on. Since Italians are very smart, the quality of education rose by leaps and bounds. But, in intellectual matters, Italy had always punched above its economic weight. Indeed, Musso and Gramsci are examples of people from quite poor backgrounds who rose by merit.
The Gramscian “traditional” is the professional detached scholar with no apparent allegiance to any specific class (replace that by race, caste) interest.
No. The traditional intellectual is one associated with a particular mode of production which has been superseded (though this may not be apparent). Thus, it no longer has any 'organic' connection to a dominant class and thus can fulfill no 'hegemonic' (i.e. taking leadership of different classes) function.
Seeing themselves as separate from the rest of Society, 'traditional intellectuals' may be 'aloof' from the dominant mode of production and thus indifferent to the class interest of organic intellectuals who have risen only recently or who aspire to fulfill a hegemonic role.
To give an example, both a theologian and an engineer like Pareto would be 'traditional intellectuals' from the point of view of 'Scientific Socialism' . But the theologian would be more aloof from the class interest of the industrial bourgeoisie. He would still hanker for the medieval world of battling Bishops and aristocratic Abbots. The task of the Commie nutjob was to seduce both types of 'traditional intellectual' and get them to slit their own throats by turning Italy into as horrible a shithole as Stalinist Russia. Thankfully, the Italians were too sensible to back 'organic intellectuals' who wanted to imitate backward, Asiatic, Russia. Still, with hindsight, keeping Musso in power was a bad idea. But then, who would have predicted that the fool would be seduced by a guy who looked like Charlie Chaplin?
The “organic” intellectual, on the other hand, is squarely embedded in the predicaments of her own social class or group, and her intellectual work reflects this embeddedness.
No. An organic intellectual may belong to the vanguard of any political party or pressure group. What is important is that they are seeking a hegemonic role for a particular class. Thus, the British Trade Union movement (which was considered reactionary by Commies), had plenty of ex-factory hands or coal miners who had been educated by the WEA or at places like the LSE and who worked closely with Statisticians and Economists of a 'Fabian' type. Gramsci does not deny that they were 'organic'. He just thought that his brand of Socialism was more 'Scientific' and thus was bound to win. We now know why he was wrong. But the Maths that proves this wasn't common knowledge till the beginning of the Seventies. Interestingly, some Soviet mathematicians helped in this matter. Ludicrously, Kantorovich got a Nobel precisely because he didn't understand his own work! But that work was sound enough.
Fictitious construction
What the Black Lives Matter movement has done is to forcefully bring home the true import of the Gramscian taxonomy of how intellectuals operate in society.
Thinks nobody at all. BLM had impact because it was spontaneous. There were activists associated with it but they were obviously stupid and uncredentialized. AOC is cool coz she waited tables not because she graduated cum laude from Boston U. I must admit, I thought cum laude meant something pornographic. Still the fact is I'd wanna see a video of that sort on Pornhub provided it featured someone who looked like AOC, not Deepak. I'm a bit racist that way.
Gramsci’s “traditional” intellectual or the detached scholar of our times is at least partially a fictitious construction.
No. Lots of academics feel they are a class apart and have nothing to do with anything political or stuff which represents class interest or Neo-Liberalism or some other such nonsense.
A scholar working for her tenure in the ivory tower, or a writer hoping to make it to the bestseller charts is actually acting in ways that are consistent with power structures that undergird elite cultural institutions.
The same is true of plants and animals. That's the problem with paranoia. You may start off, plausibly enough, complaining that your neighbor spies upon you while you are on the toilet. After all, perverts of that sort do exist. But once you start mentioning the illegal surveillance being carried out by cats and potted plants everybody realizes you are crazy.
It is one thing to say that financial journalists or regulators or whatever serve the interests of the Billionaires. It is another to say that the janitor too is in on the conspiracy. What happened to the Chocolate bar I left in my desk drawer? Janitor took it coz he's in the pocket of Goldman fucking Sachs!
As the so many “#BlackInTheIvory” stories have poignantly shown, these institutions are guarded by hostile (and white) gatekeepers that make them nearly impregnable for the historically marginalised.
I've been thrown off plenty of campuses. Speaking generally, the guys giving me the bum's rush are close to me in pigmentation. But they are stronger. Especially the women. On the other hand, I'd actually find it easier to get a place at a really tony University coz of my 'life experience'. The fact is I look like the missing link. Kind hearted people offer me bananas.
The “traditional” intellectual in reality is also an “organic” intellectual, principally representing elite interests.
If so Gramsci was a cretin for making the distinction. However, it is actually more and more relevant because we now have a large and expanding class of 'public intellectuals' who make it very clear that they represent a particular ideology and social group. They want a hegemonic role for that ideology and social group. By contrast, there are plenty of Professors and Researchers who don't care who is in the White House. They focus with laser like concentration on things most of us have never heard of. That's a good thing.
A practical corollary of the detached scholar fiction is Gramsci’s prescient observation that the underclass is forced to rely on the leadership of the “traditional” intellectual.
Gramsci could see that Mussolini wasn't a traditional intellectual. He had risen in journalism and by writing novels. But he was Italy's Il Duce. It is crazy to think that the rabble go running to the nearest Professor of Philology for leadership.
Even as I write this, newspapers in India are reporting a new study about how “upper caste” journalists dominate writings on caste, including stories of caste discrimination.
Why are they remaining silent on the manner in which plants and animals are complicit in Neo-Liberalism's reign of terror?
The burgeoning Black Lives Matter movement has sought to fundamentally challenge this arrangement.
Meanwhile, millions of insects are illegally surveilling me and taking videos of my sitting on the toilet and then selling those videos to Japanese billionaires for vast sums. Meanwhile I can't even afford a decent bottle 12 year old Single Malt!
The response from the elite liberal establishment has predictably been a mixed bag.
It has been a derisive fart from the rest of us.
While there has been some soul-searching, an edifice constructed on centuries of violent subjugation and domination is not going to wither away overnight.
This is equally true of edifices constructed out of bullshit. Gramscian gobshites we will always have with us.
If the Trumpian universe is offended by crumbling statues and monuments, the elite liberal order has been shaken by the more substantive challenges posed by Black Lives Matter.
Yes. But why? The fact is that African-Americans (and Afro-Caribbeans) have made an outsize contribution to Global Culture. Black Lives matter to us because black people have immeasurably enriched our lives. Furthermore, wherever Black people have held high office- regardless of their political views- they have discharged their duties with the highest possible intelligence and rectitude. Some may admire Obama. Others may align with Clarence Thomas, Sowell, Loury etc. What can't be denied is that everybody benefits when Blacks get opportunities commensurate with their talent and merit. On the other hand, Kamala Harris has been a disappointment. But Ketjani won't be.
Both the entrenched establishment and the Black Lives Matter movement know that it is much harder to reconfigure networks of cultural domination than it is to bring down a statue or two.
Nonsense! The mechanism design involved is simple enough. Moreover, African American jurists, economists, sociologists etc. have done all the necessary research. Black people can make not just Black Lives better but all Lives better. We just need to disintermediate Gramscian gobshites and 'woke' nutters. Watch 'Undercover Brother II' and you'll understand why Obama condemned that plague.
The distinguished authors of the Harper’s letter know only too well that the marginalised have no choice but to turn their volume-knobs to eleven to make themselves audible.
Deepak, baba, you are twiddling your knob too much. You will go blind! Mind it kindly.
To take offence at the perceived din created by the Black Lives Matter movement is to be tone-deaf, if not entirely deaf.
African Americans worked hard behind the scenes to distance themselves from the woke-nutters. Still, Trump benefited. Meanwhile Deepak has been twiddling his knob too much. Give it a rest, baba!
Street rap allows for the apparently chaotic notes of dissent and protest that the registers of a sanitised concert hall will not.
It also allows for a type of twerking that ballet companies shun- for the moment. Still, I have to say I look forward to the day Anna Netrebko sings 'my milk-shake brings all the boys to the yard'. Sadly my own version of it on Youtube has failed to get many hits.
At least not yet.
Amen!
Alas, Gramsci cannot possibly roll in his grave (he was cremated). His ashes, interned in a Rome cemetery, are however resonating loudly with the present moment.
Cool. A snow-globe containing Gramsci's ashes would be highly entertaining. Do they sell them on Amazon?
What is the true relevance of Gramsci's work for BLM? The answer is obvious. It is African American jurists, politicians, and social scientists who must take a hegemonic role by focusing on 'minute particulars' and doing the mechanism design necessary to improve outcomes for everybody. This involves Obama style 'sweating the small stuff'- e.g 'pattern and practice investigation' followed by 'consent decree' based reform. Crazy academics should be told, politely but firmly, to fuck the fuck off.
To understand Gramsci's initial radicalism- Worker's Councils taking control of factories etc- you have to understand the historical context. During the War, a lot of firms were under the control of soldiers. A worker would get a beating, he might even be shot, if he tried to change jobs without permission. Gramsci and the Italian proletariat was reacting against that type of virtual slavery.
The other problem Gramsci grappled with- as did the Frankfurt school more pointlessly- was why workers hated Communism. The obvious answer was that they knew what was happening in Russia was utterly horrible. Indeed, had Gramsci stayed safely in Moscow, Stalin would have killed him because they guy was undeniably bright. But he was a fucking Communist- i.e. a possible threat. Shoot him just to be on the safe side.
Turning to Deepak's own academic work, we begin to understand why he writes such stupid shite. Consider his latest paper which is about 'Residential segregation and public services'. It is forbidden to tackle the underlying problem- which is supply side- and has to focus on confirming conventional wisdom- viz. that higher class people self-segregate and then get better public services. Yet, it is obvious that supply-side questions are central. Upper middle class people in some cities don't have running water most of the time while almost everybody does in some other cities. It is easy enough to identify a 'Structural Causal Model' which solves the underlying problem and which more than pays for itself by boosting economic growth and thus tax revenue. But where's the fun in that? Why not simply do a bit of econometrics or panel surveys etc so as to dish up the same warmed up sick everybody else has been publishing for the last 40 years? True, in the old days, there was a notion that this sort of work could cause an activist Judiciary to intervene as a result of Public Interest Litigation. But we now know that such interventions led to only a temporary gain. Once the Judge in question retired or was transferred, concerned officials went back to their bad old ways.
Deepak & Co are so shrill because in their workaday world they have been utterly emasculated. They are forbidden to say anything useful or sensible. Thus they want 'everything to change' in the hope that the one thing they have to do to earn their living might be magically transformed into something utile and beneficial to the commonweal.
One final point ; mention urban water supply in Bengaluru or many other cities and what immediately springs to your mind? If you are Indian, the answer is 'water mafia' or 'tanker mafia'. Your Uncle or cousin will tell you how, to get piped water to his gated community, an alliance with the 'slum-dwellers' had to be made. To take on the Mafia (which is well connected politically and with the utilities) you have to have the local hoods on side. Even so, the tanker mafia know that the piped supply will be erratic (perhaps deliberately so!) and they can make an even bigger profit at those times. It is true, if I was living in Bengaluru, I might not write an article in Kannada about this. But surely gangsters don't read academic papers published in foreign journals?
Mafias really do exist and things can be done about them. Deepak prefers to protest the wearing of 'janeo'. Hopefully, he will persuade Rahul Baba to twiddle with his knob rather than wear sacred thread. Who knows? Maybe the two of them will be very happy together.
1 comment:
I'm reading your stuff after a long time. Good to see you're still as retarded as ever. Keep it up.
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