S.Irfan Habib lifting Ghungroo of Sumroo

S. Irfan Habib, who is not as old as Irfan Habib, writes in Caravan Magazine-

Allah Baksh Sumroo, a premier of Sindh province—equivalent to the current post of a chief minister—was a committed patriot, whom the Muslim League hated to the extreme. Sumroo’s story directly challenges the ongoing communal and divisive rhetoric where Muslims are projected as a comprador class that was wholeheartedly behind the Muslim League’s two-nation theory.

Sumroo was killed at the young age of 43. His story confirms that Islamist Politics uses violence to establish Muslim supremacy followed by forcible conversion or ethnic cleansing. In the case of the Muslim League, the justification was 'Islam is in danger'. In the case of the anti-C.A.A agitation, the justification is that 'Indian Muslims are in danger'. Yet, there was no truth in the notion that Islam was in danger in the Nineteen Forties, nor is there any truth in the suggestion that Indian Muslims are being deprived of citizenship by C.A.A/NRC. Ludicrously, the elderly Irfan Habib (not the author of this) tried to get rough with Arif Mohammad Khan demanding he quote Nathuram Godse, not Maulana Azad.

The 'Shaheen Bagh' agitation was supposed to be non-violent. But it turned violent. One of its organizers demanded that Muslims cut off Assam by physical force. He is now in jail.
One thing is clear. Muslims don't gain from such stupid lies. If they are the minority they lose disproportionately from the resulting violence. The case of Sumroo, or Sindhi Muslims in general, is worse. Though the majority, they too sustained a loss from the violent and mendacious Islamist politics of the Muslim League. Arguably, the Bengali politicians who supported the Pakistan demand, too, would have been better off if they had rejected the Islamist line.

But, resisting the Islamist line carries a cost. One may be assassinated if one is in a Muslim majority area. If not, then, like Arif Mohammed Khan, elderly nutters denounce you as a mouthpiece for the killer of Mahatma Gandhi. Why? These fools tell lies about supposed 'narratives'.

The narrative that all Muslims got together to seek India’s partition on the basis of the two-nation theory is now a few decades old.

There is no such narrative. The fact is, the Muslim League swept the polls in 1946 getting 87 per cent of the Muslim vote. Congress got 90 per cent of the non-Muslim vote. 'Secular' Muslims were proven to be show-boys. The exception was 'Frontier Gandhi'. But when push came to shove, he could not hold power and ended up in exile.

The truth is that Islam has a political dimension which can harm 'secular' Muslims as well as those of weaker or 'minority' ethnicities. This means that non-Muslims need to be wary of political demands made by Muslims qua Muslims. There is a slippery slope to Jihadi violence. The result is that there has been 'Hindu consolidation'. But even in Sri Lanka we see push-back against creeping Islamization (following the Easter bombings).

It has acquired salience again, with some hyperventilating neo-nationalists reiterating that all Muslims are traitors as they joined Muhammad Ali Jinnah and his Muslim League to divide India.

Sadly, all Muslims not following the Jihadi line are considered traitors and apostates worthy of death by well-funded, internationally networked, Islamist outfits. On the one hand, this means that Leftist academics are considered 'useful idiots' by these extremists. Their role is to spread stupid lies so that the Islamists can recruit cannon fodder. But how is one to spread stupid lies in the internet age? The answer is that you point your finger at some alleged narrative which you attribute to 'the powers that be'. In other words you feed a sense of paranoia to spread stupid lies.

These people forget that a large number of Muslims, who consciously decided to stay back, had a choice—either to leave and be Pakistanis

and lose their property

or stay back in India

and try to keep a 'special' status

and choose their homeland. Many opted for the latter.

Till the Custodian of Evacuee Property started harassing them or economic opportunities across the border enticed them away. In any case, all sensible people tried to get the fuck away from 'homelands' which were turning into anarchic 'shitholes'.

A similar choice was made by many Hindus who decided to stay back in Pakistan. However, staying back in a democratic, secular and plural India was different from opting for a regressive and sectarian Islamist Pakistan. The future of both, who stayed behind, has proved that so tellingly. 

I wonder if this complacency is warranted. The day may come when Muslims in West Bengal will regret not leaving earlier for the East. As it is, a Bangladeshi writer has said in the NYT that Bengali Muslim immigration to East Pak was for economic not political reasons.

Unfortunate political developments and the prevalent communal rhetoric in India has forced me to go back to the history afresh.

The 'unfortunate political development' is that the Supreme Court completed the NRC exercise in Assam and threw a bomb in Amit Shah's lap. Congress and the Left tried to take advantage of this by telling stupid lies. This led to violence and a backlash. So fresh lies of a stupid type have to be told.

There is a concerted campaign to malign all Indian Muslims as leftover Pakistanis, who are enemies within the country; the narrative is that these fifth columnists should be shunted out to Pakistan in the so-called national interest.

Irfan Habib certainly believes that Arif Mohammed Khan should say 'I am a devotee of Nathuram Godse. I serve an administration which will deport all Muslims, including me. There genuinely is a 'narrative' of the type S.Irfan Habib will write about in the Caravan magazine.' The fact that Khan refused to say anything like this is PROOF that Islam is in danger!

But merely indicting all Muslims for the sake of petty majoritarian politics goes against the facts of history. 

Whereas it is a great crime not to indict Arif Mohammad Khan for refusing to say 'I do Puja to Nathuram Godse every day. As Governor of Kerala, I am drawing up lists of all Muslims so that they can be deported or killed in Gas Chambers. Jai Savarkar! Heil Hilter! Jai Genocide!'

We are a nation obsessed with history,

Nonsense! Our historians are utterly shitty. But they are not obsessed with history. They are obsessed with repeating stupid lies.

more often concerned with correcting the presumed historical wrongs than learning anything from the past. With this compulsive preoccupation, some of us live perpetually in the past. Even so, most people believe that Maulana Azad, an Independence-era leader, fought a lone battle for a united India,

No. We think he was a nutter who fell for Gandhi's toothless charms and thus became utterly useless.

while a majority of Indian Muslims vouched for Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, and his Muslim League.

The 1946 election result speaks for itself. 87 per cent is a big majority. There has never been any popular support for reversing partition in Pakistan. On the other hand, there has been a lot of forcible conversion and ethnic cleansing. Even in India, Muslims have ethnically cleansed non Muslims from areas where they are stronger.

This has no factual basis and any extent of living in the past will help unravel actual facts.  

Why does this shithead not say 'only 13 per cent of Indian Muslims voted for the Muslim League'? Alternatively, he could argue that 13 comes before 87. Thus 13 is better than 87. The better number is the one which represents the majority. Thus, because 13 per cent of Muslims did not vote for the League, they actually represented the majority.

To put the record straight, some unsung heroes from our recent history should be talked about.

Because if unsung heroes are talked about 13 becomes a bigger number than 87.

There are many historical characters that were crucial to countering the politics of hate and division of the country around the time of partition.

They failed. Some were killed by Islamists to ensure this outcome.

Among them was Allah Baksh Sumroo, who served as a premier of the Sindh province—equivalent to the current post of a chief minister—for two terms between 1938 and 1942. Sumroo was a committed patriot, whom the Muslim League hated to the extreme. He belonged to a feudal Sindhi family but was known for a frugal living and commitment to democratic values. Sumroo wore khadi even as a young man of twenty. We hear about using flags as a power symbol so often these days, but he never used a flag on his official car even in those feudal and colonial times.

So what? He was killed. No one says Islamists don't use violent methods to get their way. What worries people is that Muslims have to toe the line or else risk having their own throats slit by the fanatics.

What is important to remember today is his commitment to undivided India.

For which he was killed by Muslims. What followed was ethnic cleansing of non-Muslims from the Province he had led.

Sumroo emerged as a major challenge to the divisive politics of communalists of all hues, particularly the Muslim League.

But their  killing him disposed of that challenge.

Azad was undoubtedly a national face, espousing composite nationalism, but he actually derived strength from such regional but powerful voices like Sumroo. 

He lost all strength when the 1946 election results came in. All Muslims seats at the Center were taken by the League. They formed a Government in Sindh. So much for Sumroo who was 3 years dead.

To go into the details of his massive anti-Muslim League politics would require a much longer discussion. Let me just refer to one of the most important episodes in the history of our sad partition of the country. The Muslim League passed a resolution recommending the creation of an independent state of Muslims on 23 March 1940 at Lahore. Soon, Sumroo organised a huge conference of patriotic Muslims between 27 and 30 April 1940 in Delhi, called the Azad Muslim Conference. According to some estimates, there were not less than seventy-five thousand people who gathered from all over India to condemn the Muslim League for its divisive politics.

Six years later, the League captured 87 per cent of the Muslim vote. By then Sumroo was dead and buried.

Most of these people came from a large number of political and social organisations, largely representing the backward and artisanal sections of the Muslim society. This representation at the conference was an indicator that the Muslim League spoke for the ashraf, or the privileged sections of the Muslim society while the majority of Muslims—the ajlaf, or the backward sections—remained almost untouched by the League’s rhetoric.

So what? They fell into line obediently enough. The Communists supported Partition and got their throats slit in Pakistan. In India, they could work with the establishment to ruin the economy and the educational system.

The British identified a collaborative section of the Muslim community, helped in forming the Muslim League but this section largely represented the affluent—the zamindars, and business and professional classes.

The Indian National Congress was started by the British. Viceroy Landsdowne said that the Cow Protection Agitation gave Congress some grass-roots support. Then Gandhi came and single-handedly preserved British Rule by unconditionally surrendering in 1922. Ireland and Egypt won independence. Turkey liberated itself. But India collaborated with the die-hard Tories by remaining supine. The Second Round table Conference sealed Congress's fate. It would be a Hindu party. The creation of Sindh meant that there would be a viable Pakistan before that word was first uttered. Gandhian theatrics, like that of Sumroo or Badshah Khan had no effect whatsoever on the outcome. In 1932, tribals invaded Kashmir. The Maharaja appealed for British help and got it. 16 years later, the same thing happened but the outcome was not as clean cut. India was an incompetent, Hindu, replacement for the British Raj. Pakistan was something worse. It is now poorer than Bangladesh. Thirty years ago it was ahead of China!

The leadership that emerged in the League had little clue to the highly differentiated Muslim society they claimed to represent.

So what? They won.

Azad could see this early.

Like Azad knew rural India!

Referring to Indian Muslims at the time, he wrote in his weekly Urdu language newspaper, Al Hilal, in 1912:
The most unfortunate part of their life is that they have a section of elite who are in the forefront and leading them.

Them bastids went to Aligarh, or, worse yet, London, and spick Inglis gud. May Allah destroy them!

Those are the self-proclaimed leaders of the community. They have put the crown on their own head, with their own hands, instead of the masses doing the same. They indulged in all sorts of exhibitionism of power and the worst is show of their wealth. And by so doing they had converted the millat [class] of downtrodden men in their community as their slaves and camp followers. And now if anyone tries to question their validity as leaders or defy them, they are successfully suppressed and annihilated by those selfish leaders; as they have the power of money.

What happened to Azad? He became a camp-follower of Gandhi who had plenty of bania money.

Sumroo’s presidential address at the Azad Muslim Conference in April 1940 also exposed the misplaced arguments of the League, particularly in the name of religion and culture. All through his speech he spoke extensively on the shared history and heritage, stressed on the compositeness of Indian nation and nationalism and emphasised that the compact between diverse communities cannot be severed.

Yet it was. Hindus were about 25 per cent of the population. They are less than 10 per cent now. No compact existed as was proved in 1948.

What is the point of writing bollocks pointing out that some other people talked bollocks 80 years ago and that bollocks whose wholly useless?

Strongly condemning the two-nation theory exponents, The Sunday Statesman of 28 April 1940 quoted him saying in his speech:
A majority of the 90,000,000 Indian Muslims who are descendants of the earlier inhabitants of India are in no sense other than the sons of the soil with the Dravidian and the Aryan and have as much right to be reckoned among the earliest settlers of this common land.

But, where they were the majority they tyrannized and ethnically cleansed non Muslims. The leopard does not  change its spots. In Kashmir, the Muslim majority ethnically cleansed the Hindu minority long after Independence. In Delhi, just recently, a supposedly non-violent protest by Muslims turned violent quickly enough. One of the organizers of the protest can be seen on camera demanding much more bloodshed. If this is what is happening where Muslims are the minority, imagine what they will do if they become the majority!

The nationals of different countries cannot divest themselves of their nationality merely by embracing one or another faith.

But this Islamist view has prevailed. The truth is both Hindus and Muslims want to escape shithole countries and acquire American or European Nationality.

In its universal sweep Islam, the faith, can run in and out of as many nationalities and regional cultures as may be found in world.

But it can also recruit terrorist nutjobs wherever it can be found. 

He underlined the long history of shared heritage of Hindus and Muslims, as mentioned in a Hindustan Times report on the same day:

It is a vicious fallacy for Hindu, Muslim and other inhabitants of India to arrogate to themselves an exclusively proprietary right over either the whole or any particular part of India.

It was not a fallacy. It was a prophesy which came true. The thing had been inevitable since the Second Round Table Conference. 

The country as an indivisible whole and as one federated and composite unit belongs to all the inhabitants of the country alike and is as much the inalienable and imprescriptible heritage of the Indian Muslim as of other Indians.

Unless they can get to Europe or America. If the Gulf or the Kingdom gave citizenship that would be an even better choice because taxes are lower.

Sumroo made these detailed references to the shared history and intermixing of Hindu and Muslim cultures over the centuries to counter both the League as well as those who were arguing for Hindutva majoritarianism. He was aware, like Azad, of the forces which threatened the future of united composite India. Sumroo needs to be talked about today more seriously to counter all those who threaten fellow Muslim citizens to go to Pakistan. 

What is the point talking about a guy who was killed long ago and whose verbiage was proved utterly worthless? The facts can't be gainsaid.

In his address, Sumroo provided a counter for another argument put forth by neo-nationalists today—that Muslims asked for Pakistan and once it was granted by dividing the country, all of them should have moved there.

Or accepted that they would live in a Hindu or other non-Muslim dominated country save where they were in the majority- i.e. the Kashmir Valley. 

This would have settled the issue forever.

That is precisely what happened- save in Kashmir where there is separatism. However in districts contiguous to Bangladesh, such separatism may arise as demographics change. Some Bengali Hindus may welcome this. It appears that Bangladesh is better run. 

All those who make such insinuations today need to know what popular Muslim leaders like Sumroo said of the creation of Pakistan:

No they don't. Why? Pakistan exists. Sumroo does not. 

It was based on false understanding that India is inhabited by two nations, Hindu and Muslim. It is much more to the point to say that all Indian Mussalmans are proud to be Indian nationals and they are equally proud that their spiritual level and creedal realm is Islam. As Indian nationals—Muslims and Hindus and others, inhabit the land and share every inch of the motherland and all its material and cultural treasures alike according to the measures of their just and fair rights and requirements as the proud sons of the soil.

This may have been true under the British. But they left long ago.

Azad, too, sent a message of support to the Azad Muslim conference as he was not able to attend it. He expressed his solidarity with the conference and wished that the deliberations would be fruitful for the great cause of the freedom of the country and the Muslims.
This fight for composite and inclusive Indian nationalism, which looks so alarming and threatening today, is more than few decades old.

That fight was lost long ago.

Azad and Sumroo challenged these regressive and divisive forces in the 1930s and 1940s. They almost took the battle to the enemy’s camp by organising a huge conference in Delhi, which unnerved the Muslim League leadership. Sumroo was assassinated in 1943. It was suspected to be the League’s handiwork.  

Three years later the League triumphed in the polls. They formed a Government in Sindh. Sumroo had backed the wrong horse. So had Azad. He should have settled in his maternal ancestor's Saudi Arabia and formed a 'Hizbullah'.

We can comprehend his stature and the sense of loss on his death by reading some of the reactions in contemporary press and also the pain expressed by several nationalist leaders. The Hindustan Times described him as follows:
… finest of Sindhis, one of the truest of Musalmans, one of the noblest sons of India who loved his peasants for he loved the land; and he used to wear khaddar even in the twenties, for he loved the poor. Both the Hindus and Muslims looked up to him as a leader … He had an all-India mind and in the midst of division and strife, pinned his faith on an independent united India, and dreamt the dream of the united State of Asia in the years to come …
His murder was seen as a national calamity by several papers. The Amrita Bazar Patrika called him “one of the most vigorous personalities, endowed with a high sense of duty and rare courage of conviction, who easily commanded the respect and admiration of all, even of those who differed from him on some or the other public questions.” Commenting on his death, the newspaper added, “A life so full of promise has been cut short. And India is much poorer today by the death of the young man of 42 whose sturdy patriotism and devotion to duty would be cherished long after the present unhappy situation has ended and India has come into her own.”

A short while later, millions were murdered or forced to flee. Sumroo's fate was but a harbinger of what stupid Gandhian politics inevitably entailed. Suppose Indians had not talked worthless shite and co-operated to get rich then minorities would have been viewed as assets and protected as such. Instead, we had Gandhi-giri and Leftist bullshit. Both are based on stupid, paranoid, lies.

The right wing in India often says that Subhas Chandra Bose, a leader of the anticolonial struggle, did not find his rightful place in Indian history. I find it politically motivated and not really a sincere observation. It is people like Sumroo, who seem to be lost in our history records, even in the writings of the so-called liberal and Marxist historians, except for a chapter in a book by Shamshul Islam titled Muslims Against Partition of India. 

But everybody knows that Liberal and Marxist historians are shit. Look at Sharjeel Imam. He could have made money in I.T. But he ended up doing a PhD in history at JNU. The cretin is now in jail.

Another prominent Muslim voice from the past, who can rightfully represent our composite nationalist ethos is Saifuddin Kitchlew, a Kashmiri freedom fighter whose family moved to Punjab. It was his arrest along with Dr Satyapal, a political leader, that triggered the protests leading to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919. Most of us are oblivious to his contributions as well. Kitchlew had also mourned the loss of Sumroo saying:
At this critical period of the freedom movement in the country the death of a man like Mr Allah Baksh is a thundering blow to the forces of nationalism. Mr Allah Baksh was a thorough going nationalist. Mr Allah Baksh is dead but his work will remain.

That work consisted of maligning Hindu Nationalism. This soon turned into maligning Hinduism. Now it is nothing but paranoid nonsense. Muslims have made themselves hated in Delhi. Students and Academics from JNU & Jamia have contributed to this. This was not the outcome most of us expected. We thought Shaheen Bagh would turn a sort hipster love-in. Instead Pinjra Tod unleashed the genie of communal violence and bitter hatred. What has soared aloft is the vulture not the falcon.

It is necessary to know about such men and women from our past as their profiles directly challenge the ongoing communal and divisive rhetoric where Muslims are projected as a comprador class that was wholeheartedly behind the League’s two-nation theory.

Muslims are not 'projected as a comprador class'. They are projected as evil bastards who will slit your throat and grab your land- if they have the upper hand. That is the 'narrative' we need to combat. Say loud and clear 'Muslims in India are hardworking and poor. If we get them- especially the girls- into big factory dormitories, we can rise up. Stop listening to stupid Professors. Give Free Enterprise a chance.'

Azad was surely the prime political figure, an Islamic scholar, who stressed on the composite nationalism. However, he was not fighting a lone battle against the Muslim League, as Jinnah wanted the British and the Muslims to believe. He was hated and derided as a show boy of the Congress party, precisely to show that most of the other Muslims and their leaders were with the idea of Pakistan. This falsehood needs to be exposed, particularly in the midst of the ongoing divisive politics.  

This cretin thinks Indians respect Azad. They don't. Why? His ideas were shit. Some Islamist nutters are interested in his early writing. But Hindus are too ignorant of Arabic and Persian and Islamic theology to understand any subtlety he was capable off. They just see him as a fool who fell for Gandhian foolishness. Nehru did too. That's why the country adopted begging bowl diplomacy. But that begging bowl had a hole in it. The soul of that hole was talking worthless bollocks of the type this author indulges in.

As for divisive politics- who is practicing it? Only these nutters who pretend that the RSS is Fascist and Hindu Nationalism is not Indian Nationalism despite the fact that only Hinduism holds the country together. All non-Hindu majority territories have a separatist movement. These are the plain facts of the case- not a 'narrative' which has to be combated by talking about Sumroo or Ghungroo. 

Why Angrynomics is an oxymoron

In Sanskrit there is a saying 'anger is a small pleasure'. I suppose, like Aristotle, the notion is that a painful desire for revenge is nevertheless pleasurable because that vengeance will bring relief. But anger is a bad choice. It has no place in 'Artha' or 'Oikonomia'- it adds nothing to Meaning or the creation or management of Value. Both are idiographic, concerned with 'Minute Particulars', rather than nomothetic gobshittery re. the 'General Good'. Only in this sense are the 'Tigers of Wrath' wiser than the horses of Instruction. Blake meant elite Paideia which was as crap then as it is now.

True, anger is also a signalling device. Lonergan & Blyth, the authors of 'Angrynomics',  are concerned with 'virtue signalling' on poverty, inequality and climate change.

Lonergan, a fund manager, writes ' In Angrynomics we make a distinction between two forms of public anger: moral outrage and tribal rage.'

This is foolish. A tribe, of whatever sort, sees itself as a morally constituted collective. Poets are spoken off as an 'irritable tribe' though they are of diverse origins. A 'threat point' may be wholly imaginary- e.g curses uttered or puerile invective hurled at one who frustrates our perhaps ignoble intentions. We may laugh at people who indulge in such childishness. Indeed, this is the problem with 'public anger'. It may signal impotence and stupidity.

Moral outrage is associated with impotence. By contrast dry as dust proposals to improve mechanism design may not appear to have any emotional valency. We may feel Obama should have gone ape-shit over Police killings of African Americans. But we must only admit that only 'no-drama' Pattern & Practice investigations and 'consent decrees' can improve outcomes. Moreover, by focusing on 'mechanism design' we can find solutions to other problems through 'Tibeout model' subsidiarity- i.e. local solutions which permit growth on the basis of deepening comparative advantage through appropriate local public good provision. Of course, 'global' problems won't magically disappear in this way. But nothing can be done about them in any case. 

 It is important to be clear that these are not subjective classifications that Mark and I have plucked out of thin air. They are empirically distinct phenomena. To observe their existence requires no assumption of relative merit. There seems to be two observable forms of anger which humans express publicly: anger at perceived injustice which I label the anger of angels, and the anger of tribal fans, or the anger of devils. To observe these forms of anger in play all that is required is a trip to a football match (there is always an angry minority) or attendance at an extinction rebellion protest.

I see no difference. There are attention seeking sociopaths at both type of event. They don't care that their antics spoil things for everybody else. We are happy when bystanders kick their heads in.

Lonergan is writing in response to a review by Chris Dillow, who writes for the Investor's Chronicle and appears as stupid as Lonergan.

In his review, Chris adheres to this typology of anger but argues that ‘extractive capitalism’ has hijacked tribal rage to serve its interests, and subdue the potential of legitimate indignation to create real reform.

God alone knows what these two cretins consider 'real reform'. Both think Keynes and Friedman were great as opposed to hopelessly wrong.

My contention is that a widespread consensus exists across our society on three ethically-motivating concerns – making growth environmentally sustainable, tackling inequality in its many forms, and minimising the damage of recessions.

This is silly. If National Income is properly measured, Growth is always net of Environmental cost. The Consensus should be to 'internalize externalities' in one way or another so market signals reflect relevant information and mechanisms are incentive compatible. Inequality should not be tackled. Productivity or Consumptions gaps which are easily repairable should be filled because this raises Growth by reducing Information asymmetry and Knightian Uncertainty which in turns means a Pareto improvement. Recessions are a good thing. We need more sharp short shakeouts to improve resource allocation. Chrematistics as hysteresis is what ergodic Economic processes naturally dispose off.

What is patently lacking is a novel, off-the-shelf, and compelling manual on how to do this.

Fuck manuals. Economists are stupider than average. Treat them as third rate Accountants unless they actually have some Entrepreneurial talent. Don't ever worship them.

There has been nothing comparable to Friedman’s blueprint for tackling stagflation in the 1970s

which failed. Money is not wholly exogenous. NAIRU is anything goes.

or the Keynesian agenda for a mixed economy post-War.

Which is cool if you are doing 'catch-up' or 'Reconstruction' type Growth and hoping to bake in Imperial 'exorbitant privilege'- i.e. swindling sand niggers.

It is precisely because of this vacuum that the political class has sought power through populism and nationalism – not, as Chris implies, because the manual for reform is there to be implemented, but capital is obstructing it. 

The truth is low real exchange rates are a good thing long term. Either you have them, like Germany, or you don't, like the UK, in which case you gotta Brexit your way into lower terms of trade and thus lower material standards of living for older savers.

The 'political class' means guys who want to end up with a sinecure with Amazon or Google or some other Robber Baron. They may take a flutter on 'nationalism', but then again they may not. Bo Jo got lucky. Cameron fell on his face. That's it. That's the whole story. Why get your knickers in a twist about any of this? Capital means old farts like me who now understand we must accept negative returns on our savings and learn to pinch the pennies in our retirement. Also we should try to die before we become incontinent. Capital has lost. So has Labour because the proletariat keeps having babies and even if it doesn't babies grow up and sneak across borders unless they are smart in which case they are invited in. Enterprise we will always have with us even if the rate of profit goes negative. There will be no final crisis. Just a prolonged lysis of diminishing horizons for the many and increasing rewards for those who don't give a fuck about Economics or Political Science- though they may employ a couple of such professionals for menial work of a Sophistic or Statistical kind.

Dotan Leschem's dotty philology

Four years ago I devoted a couple of posts to Dotan Leschem's dotty economics.

I will now look at the foundational philological claim of his book 
The Origins of Neoliberalism: Modeling the Economy from Jesus to Foucault

The Three-Dimensional Human
Since its inception in Greek antiquity, the West imagined human life as evolving in a three-dimensional space: the economic, the political, and the philosophical, distinguished by boundaries set by law.

No. The three spheres were economic/scientific, political/cultural and moral/religious. Philosophy claimed to make a contribution to all three spheres.  But, it was more frequently mocked than venerated, though, no doubt, it lay at the core of a prestigious type of paideia.

Underlying the happy and self-sufficient Greek polis

which never existed. 

was the economy.

No. It was military efficacy. 

Preconditioning philosophical life, unbound by this mortal coil, and glorified, if only momentarily, by the light of the eternal, was the economy, embedded in existential necessity.

In other words people needed to work in order to eat. But without military efficacy they would be enslaved and might get a lot less to eat. 

Unlike most authors who view the history of thought from the perspective of either the political or the philosophical dimension, this book attempts to retell the history of the three-dimensional human being from the less-traveled dimension of the economy. In particular, it reinserts into this history the most glorious and at the same time most ignored chapter of the human trinity of economy, politics, and philosophy in the Christianity of Late Antiquity. For it was in the era between the Councils of Nicea (325) and Chalcedon (451) that the one-dimensional zoon oikonomikon came to reign supreme in the human trinity.

This is nonsense. The Christians, with good reason, thought life nasty brutish and short. The best thing to do was get martyred or spend your life praying so as to have a blessed eternity in Paradise. Economics doesn't much matter if, at any moment, you could be killed or enslaved or simply perish in an epidemic or a famine. 

Philological History of Oikonomia
The history of the economy conducted in the book is different from the usual economic histories.

because it is utterly mad.

It is a philological history that traces the meanings attached to the notion of oikonomia since its original use as management and dispensation (nemein) of the oikos in Archaic Greek until today.

The materials for such a history are not available. Still, for specific traditions, we can make some educated guesses.

Although not excluding concepts that traveled through Latin, such as prudence and law, it is essentially a history of the “West that speaks Greek,”

which did not exist over the greater part of Europe. By contrast there were Greek colonies and Kings in Afghanistan and Pakistan and even parts of present day India. That's why we know 'artha' is one translation of 'oikonomia'. But 'artha' means 'meaning'. In other words, the word itself means 'hermeneutics'. Indeed, Price theory is a Value theory is a Meaning theory or type of hermeneutics. Thus philology is facing its own hermeneutics when it tries to grapple with this. The result, as is obvious from Leschem's lucubrations, is that nothing but stupid, ignorant, lies are uttered. 

focusing on the transposition of its key concepts oikonomia, poli-tikeh, philosophia,and nomos.

But philology is not a robust tool in this enterprise. Why? A small change in the information set- e.g. the discovery of a papyrus manuscript or rock inscription- can completely change the philological reception. As knowledge of context changes, our reconstructed semantics deforms radically. 

It tells a nominalist history, that is, it begins by asking which successive semantic values have been attributed to the word oikonomia by different authors and discourses instead of asking how specific terms are used to describe a content that is supposedly known.

What is the difference between a word's 'semantic value' and 'pragmatic value'- i.e. how the word is used? I suppose the answer is the 'spirit' in which the term is used. Dotty Leschem may want to show that some guy who lived a long time ago used a word in some very stupid sense peculiar to Leschem's own brand of idiocy. Thus he shares the same spirit as that venerable dead guy.

I recall reading the word 'computer' in Shakespeare. I might, to glorify my own humble profession, want to pretend that the Bard of Avon was a humble coder or other such 'intellectual coolie'. But why should I stop there? Why not say Sheikh Peer was the son of a kasai from Bradford on the A1 motorway? I met him at the LSE. His Globe Theater was next door to my office in Moorgate. 

Such a philological inquiry deconstructs the “retrospective” method generally used in economic history, histories of ideas or science that project the contemporary meaning attached to key concepts back into history.

Nonsense! Philology has to uncover historical evidence re. semantics and pragmatics. Superior analytical tools enable them to do so in a convincing manner. Alternatively, they could go work for the History Channel and show that Sheikh Peer was a time travelling LISP programmer of Mirpuri descent.

Deconstruction only claims to expose metaphysical preconceptions. It doesn't pretend that it can actually change the past. 

In the case of the economy, these retrospective histories commonly count for either 1. a history of the economy as a distinct sphere of existence whose meaning is unaltered throughout history, usually understood as encompassing the relations of production, consumption, and distribution

That may be true of older models. But Financial 'Econophysics' has burgeoned and 'Chrematistics' is now on the menu. 

2. history of “economy” as a rational disposition, based on the assumption that agents of history act “economically” and that the definition of the economic mode of conduct and of the agent remain unaltered throughout history.

But our ideas of rationality have greatly changed. Regret-minimization not Utility Maximization is the way go under Knightian Uncertainty. 

This sense gained currency in economics and history departments over the last half-century with the rise of “new economic history”

 But Econ itself moved forward as an ergodic science. Most American Econ PhDs know nothing and care less about Econ History. The thing is reserved for cretins. Amazon will pay you good money for your Math skills.

3. Finally, history of “economic thought,” which occupies itself with reading texts by past writers about “the economy.” The last presupposes (based on state-of-the-art economic theories) what the field and objects of “economics” are in themselves and then looks to the past only to identify cases of partial recognition, or misrecognition, of this sphere and its objects.

Sure. But you go in for this shite once you are past your prime and can no longer keep up with the math.

Economics does not matter very much. You can get rich or make your country rich without bothering with its academic refinements. This has always been the case. Dotty Leschem thinks otherwise. Apparently the word 'oikonomia' has a unique magic.

Although word choices, whether innocent, contingent, or deliberate,can have little to no influence on the nature of what it names, this is not the case with oikonomia.

Coz this nutter says so. 

As the latter history unfolds in the book, it becomes evident that, upon migrating from the institution of the ancient oikos to the Christian ecclesia and later to the liberal market

No migration occurred. The oikos, or household, existed side by side with the ecclesia- or political assembly of citizens- as well as with markets of various types, some of which stretched across vast geographical expanses. South Indians drank Greek Wine before they met any actual 'Yavanas'. 

, the economization of these institutions was framed within the limits of an invariant question because of its seemingly different previous meaning and not in spite of it.

Nonsense! Firstly, economists did not take over Politics or the Church. There was no 'economization' though no doubt business-like transactions did occur at the margin. There was no 'invariant question' and it had no limits. People who started off propitiating a particular supernatural power for a limited reason ended up praying to God to get an eternity in Paradise superior to that enjoyed by the Olympian Gods.

Reinserting the relegated Christian chapter into the history of the economy provides the essential hermeneutical key for the explication of its core invariant meaning, one that is simultaneously open to broad variations and compelling. A comparative account of the economy of the oikos, ecclesia and market based on such a philological history suggests a typology of four criteria according to which a model of human action is called an economy:

A model concerned with choice under scarcity is an economic model. But Politics is about public goods which are non rival and non excludable. Thus, locally, there is no scarcity. Religion has no scarcity even globally. Heaven is not 'congestible'. There's plenty of space for everyone. 

1. it involve the acquisition of a theoretical and practical disposition of prudence

No. Economics can study Ants in exactly the same way it studies Australians. That is why Game theoretic models came to dominate.

2. which faces the human condition of excess that transcends human rationality;

 God alone knows what this means. You won't find it in any Econ textbook- even one by the devout Quaker, Ken Boulding.

3. this rational engagement with excess generates surplus; finally,

Nonsense! Surplus is defined as Total Benefit received less Total Cost of the transaction. There is 'rational engagement' with 'scarcity', not 'excess'. By contrast, if I hearken to a proselytizer and feel I am saved there is no Cost and infinite Benefit. But, equally, if I say 'hey! you lost weight' to my neighbor and he replies 'Wow! Your hair looks great. I almost didn't recognize you!' then we both receive quite a large benefit at trifling cost.

4. this action takes place in a distinct “economic” sphere alongside other spheres such as the political and the philosophical.

But Dotty's sphere is not 'economic' at all. It is as stupid as shit. Nobody will save money or improve their business model or help their country make smarter choices by reading his Eurocentric rubbish. 

This fourfold typology of economy also establishes the Christian moment as the missing link,

Though some Christian countries are as poor as shit while Japan surged ahead. 

which, nevertheless, functions as the turning point in the use history of the economy between the ancient oikos where excess was despised,

by whom? Some guy who lived in a tub? The ancients liked gold and silver and shiny shiny things. A man who discharged his liturgical duties in a sumptuous manner was accorded great honor. 

the economic sphere kept to minimum, and the neoliberal marketized economy where excess is desired, the economy infinitely growing.

So there you have it. Dotty is saying 'Boo to Neo-liberalism. It is very evil. Funding for my shite Department has been cut due to that evil ideology. Why can't young people just learn to subsist on a hunk of stale bread while they pay through the nose for instruction in my brand of imbecility? If things continue like this, cretins won't be able to get PhDs and to call themselves Professors! True oikonomia means giving shitheads like me money so we can talk worthless bollocks. I have proved this philologically by telling stupid, ignorant, lies.'

If Dotty were Indian, his idiocy would be endearing. He would get a Magsaysay award. But the guy is Israeli. Them peeps be smart. Perhaps the whole thing is an elaborate prank. The trouble is, stupid Indians might be taken in. We generate enough imbecility on our own. We don't need to import it from Israel or America. 

Peter J Hill's silly 'Judaeo-Christian' exceptionalism

This is the abstract of a new paper by Prof Peter Hill

The background conditions for the emergence of the rule of law are important but underdeveloped.

This is not the case for Anglo Saxon Jurisprudence. The Common Law derives from immemorial custom. Coke did suggest, it is true, that Greek speaking Druids played a part in this but the fact remains that Judicial historicism in England and America discounts any Religious contribution save to Canon Law. But during the course of the Nineteenth Century that type of law ceased to be separate.

The fact of the matter is that Judaism was Hellenized by conquest and Greek speaking Jewish scholars changed the nature of the Religion, as far as Christians are concerned, at least partly on the basis of a 'homonoia' which had a commercial and administrative character and which was embodied in the ideal of a cosmopolitan Empire.

This paper traces more fully the relationship between the concept of human equality and the development of the rule of law.

Judaism and Christianity rejected human equality. Women were inferior as were 'barbarian' slaves. The Law is a service industry which seeks monopoly status but which has to adapt because of jurisdiction shopping. This may curb the degree to which it  can engage in price and service provision discrimination. It is only relatively recently that 'equality before the law' has become a shibboleth. The first majority Labour Government abolished the right of members of the House of Lords to trial by their peers. Previously, 'blue blood' entitled you to special treatment. Earlier still there was 'benefit of clergy' and ethnic discrimination- e.g. 'presentment of Englishry'.

It presents evidence that the Jewish and Christian concept of all human beings as God’s image bearers is an important contributor to the rule of law in Western civilization.

The reverse is the case. Changes in the Law caused Religions to change how they conceived of human beings. But this was and is quite a painful struggle.

The formulation of universal human equality was not, however, a sufficient condition for the emergence of the rule of law.

Nor was it a necessary condition. Indeed, the thing was wholly irrelevant. Positive law arises from the efficacy of command. But there may be a civil law independent of the command of the Despot.

It took centuries of articulation in different institutions and social settings.

But this articulation had absolutely no practical effect unless the Despot so wished.

It only reached full fruition when it was joined with an understanding of appropriate political systems as expressed by political theorists such as Locke, Montesquieu, and Madison.

Who abolished slavery, right? Wrong. Madison had some political power. The other two were mere scribblers.

Prof Hill quotes outdated research of a type we all recognize as foolish

World Bank research indicates that a one standard deviation increase in the rule of law index increases GDP by 300 percent (Kaufman et al 2007). And Carothers (2010, 19) asserts “The degree of apparent international consensus on the value and importance of the rule of law is striking. . . . almost no leader anywhere is openly against the rule of law or will publicly mount an argument that the rule of law is a bad idea for their society.”

That was then. Now we have Chairman Xi and the Saudi Crown Prince predicating their countries' economic rise on ignoring the law to force even the wealthiest and most privileged to hand over assets or use them solely for a National purpose. Traditionally, economists had accepted that Command Economies could do more rapid 'catch up' growth- if they were ruthless enough. We have gone back to that way of thinking after a brief period of euphoria consequent upon Soviet collapse and China's sneaky rise. Even in Europe, we see 'populist' Administrations, which gave the voters more secure or higher material standards of living, rolling back the Rule of Law. Post Brexit Britain may increase 'executive privilege' or 'political question doctrine'. It may even get rid of the Supreme Court which Brussels forced it to institute.

Black Lives Matter has raised the issue of 'qualified immunity' for public servants guilty of the most heinous crimes. But this is linked to the fact that Developed Capitalist countries have 'Baumol Cost disease' in their Legal sectors such that access to judicial remedies has fallen, not risen.

 North, Wallis and Weingast (2009, xii) suggest that only about 15 percent of the world’s population live in what they call open access societies, where the rule of law exists. Weingast (2010) discusses the difficulty of achieving and sustaining the rule of law in developing countries. 

The truth is the one percent may have plenty of 'open access'- unless like Jeffery Epstein there is public pushback and the guy is found hanging in his jail cell- but the 99 % feel they are increasingly cut off from legal remedies. Developing countries, with lots of cheap labor, may be better at upholding the rule of law but Baumol Cost disease can set in very quickly if 'woke' nutters keep passing new unimplementable laws and creating new 'checks and balances' with plenty of loopholes for those with money or the ability to kill your wife and children.

 In the discussion that follows I will use what is called a “thick” conception of the rule of law, where procedural rights and substantive protections of individual rights exist.

The conception does not matter. What matters is whether there is an incentive compatible mechanism to provide remedies for rights-holders. Such mechanisms can collapse while Professors talk bollocks. It is foolish to assume that the Law is frictionless and that it uses up no resources. The truth is it has always been a scarce commodity.  Philosophy, because it is useless, is welcome to gas on about conceptions and say mean things about how thick or thin they are. But the Law is not useless. Shitheads who want to continually expand its scope while ignoring its supply side constraints render it less and less worthy of public support.

 In contrast, a “thin” definition focuses on procedures, rather than on justice or rights. A society with a thin rule of law could have slavery or other substantial rights violations so long as the rules were clearly articulated and well understood.

So could a thick rule of law. No doubt, the slaves might be referred to in some other terms, but they would still exist unless the resources were made available to liberate them.

Most arguments for the importance of the rule of law for economic growth and for justice are using the thick definition, where there is substantive protection of fundamental rights.

Arguments for the importance of X are not themselves important at all. What matters is whether X 'pays for itself' or rather whether there is an incentive compatible mechanism for this to happen.

Prof Hill comes from a country with an Anglo Saxon legal system. Yet he writes-

 Despite the general recognition of the importance of the rule of law, there is little agreement about the historical process by which it came into existence.

This is utterly false. America is founded as much on Sir Edward Coke's Institutes as it is on the Bible. Ours is a historicist jurisprudence. On the Continent, there is a greater pretence that a Roman 'Natural Law' tradition has valency. But their Jurisprudence remains historicist. Germany's relative backwardness meant that Professors had more of a role in a Nationalist reawakening but Germany did not turn out well. It was only after the country was conquered and occupied that its 'ordoliberalism' could flourish.

It did become at least a partial institutional reality in certain Western economies in the late 18th century, with political philosophers articulating early expressions of a rule of law, articulations that were further developed and implemented over the next century.

But articulations can be any old shite. Carl Schmitt sure was an articulate guy. Thankfully, British and American and French troops occupied Western Germany and allowed its decent and hardworking people to rise by their own efforts.

In this paper I argue that the primary factor in understanding the development of the rule of law is a particular belief structure, a set of norms about universal human dignity that is necessary for such a legal framework.

Unlike Europe, America remains a deeply Religious country. Norms haven't changed that much. But the Laws have. Why? Technology changed the 'Supply Side'. The economic substructure changed so drastically that the superstructure, kicking and screaming, had to follow suit. Pedants may wish to glorify themselves by saying that they contributed to this by instilling new norms. But if Professors really have the power to get us to accept 'universal human dignity' why don't they get us to larn tu spill gud? I took courses in Math at Colidge. But I can't count past 69.

Greif and Tabellini (2017) provide an interesting study of the importance of beliefs in their discussion of the corporation and the clan in High Medieval Europe and China. They find that Europe was influenced by a system of generalized morality grounded in Christian doctrine.

But Europe was a shit-show where priests sold indulgences to gullible fools anxious to escape hell-fire. Islam was gobbling up Christian territory. It was only the daring of the fisherfolk on the Atlantic littoral who opened up the Americas and the Indies for European enrichment. But, as the Jesuits found, China was better ordered. The 'Chinese Rites' controversy harmed the Catholic Church. The urbane Chinese were clearly able to live virtuously without any need for a Christianity which had made itself ridiculous by its irrational internecine conflicts. Deism and belief in 'natural' not prophetic religion was influenced in some part by European acknowledgement of Chinese virtue and sophistication. But China was bound to fall behind because it had turned its back on oceanic trade.

This belief structure led to institutional innovations, in particular the corporation, which were based on non-kinship relationships.

The Chinese had guilds and 'brotherhoods' which were not kinship based. These functioned like Corporations and had a wide geographical reach.

In contrast China had a system of limited morality, where moral obligations did not extend much beyond the extended family. This meant that major social connections were formed through the clan.

But clans were subject to Imperial law. There was a degree of 'collective responsibility'. Moreover, class or caste distinctions declined in China earlier than they did in Europe precisely because of greater commercial development.

This essay builds on the insights of Greif and Mokyr and Grief and Tabellini and provides a historical narrative for the North, Wallis, and Weingast argument that a belief in human equality became instantiated in an institutional framework they call the open access order.

Clearly there was no belief in human equality at a time when slavery and genocide of indigenous people was considered a good and salutary thing.

The narrative also attempts to answer Weingast’s question as to “Why 1800?” for the formation of institutions (especially the rule of law) that could sustain liberty and equality 

The answer is that the American and French Revolutions- themselves inspired by the British Glorious Revolution- had made the notion of a Nation State with 'careers open to talent' attractive and compelling. This meant disintermediating the 'blue bloods'. Sadly Napoleon made himself an Emperor and his worthless brothers Kings. But, this was why he fell. Germany did unite itself but came to grief because the Kaiser was kray kray. Italy did unite but its Kings were no great shakes. American blood and treasure saved both countries from themselves.

 Viewed in a broad historical and philosophical context the concept of universal human dignity is unusual.

Yet, it is the essence of Upanishadic teaching. All humans have an 'atma', a soul, of the same type. This 'atma' is divine. Those who gain this 'madhuvidhya' though of humble birth and occupation, yet are fitted to be the spiritual preceptors of Priests and Kings of the most exalted lineage. It is a separate matter that some of them become very rich or gain power by founding their own Kingdoms or Empires.

Almost all societies before the beginning of the first millennium operated under the assumption that people were fundamentally different in their moral standing.

This is still true. Baby bites my nose and throws away my glasses. I am delighted. Why? Coz babies have a different moral standing. If they poop on you, you don't feel obliged to retaliate in like terms.

At the more practical level, almost every organized human group operated with exclusionary principles in terms of any form of rights, privileges, or access to power.

Unlike today, when I could wander into the White House and take over the leadership of the Free World.

The major exception was ancient Israel.

Nonsense! Israel, according to the Bible, was similar to its neighbors. True, an Iranian Emperor helped them as he helped other Nations. But, later on, Israel was Hellenized. 2 Maccabees was written in Greek. Aristobulus of Alexandria sought to harmonize Greek philosophy with the Jewish Religion in the second century B.C. He laid the foundation for the view that 'Plato is Moses speaking Attic Greek'.

Joshua Berman, a noted Jewish scholar, argues that metaphysical legitimation was an essential part of the ordering of every Near Eastern society. In Israel, however, the hierarchical structure of ancient Near Eastern society was rejected on theological grounds.

Yet David founded a Dynasty and Solomon, after marrying Pharaoh's daughter and erecting a great Temple,  raised Israel to its highest point. Kingship may have departed but, to this day, a separate 'Kohain' priestly caste continues to exist. If a Kohain wishes to marry a divorcee or a convert he will have to leave Israel to do it.

The quality of the members of the Israelite polity stems from their collective covenantal relationship with God, in which each member is endowed with the status of subordinate king before the sovereign King of Kings.

Half of Jews are women. Are they 'subordinate kings'?

This is the metaphysical basis on which the notion of equality is founded (2008, 169).

The Aish Rabbi writes ' A Kohen is forbidden to marry these women, not because she is a bad person, but because there is metaphysical reality that is created which prevents a Kohen from being able to create the proper bond. Consider that H2O is water, and H2O2 is Hydrogen Peroxide. The difference may seem negligible, but is actually the difference is between life and death.' In other words, this 'metaphysics' has a physical foundation of a theurgic type. Kohains are different from other Jews. No doubt, this rule is not meant to harm or humiliate anyone but rather to protect the pure transmission of the Religion. However, it is foolish to say that Judaism is exceptional when this is not the case. Some are more equal than others.

Because of the equality inherent in the creation narrative, that all humans were made in the image of God, universal human dignity had a strong metaphysical grounding.

One could equally well say Hinduism establishes universal human dignity because every soul is consubstantial with God. Yes, outwardly there is 'karma', but the end result is univocity for an eternity compared to which 'samsara' is a blink of the eye.

The Israel society was the first social order to recognize this basic human equality.

To say this is to imply that Noah was not a Prophet as the Bible teaches. Thus this statement is contrary to the fundamental teachings of Judaism.

Christ, we firmly believe, was a Jewish Rabbi. We may be violating Jewish law by considering Him Divine. But we are simple people. No one grudges us our love and veneration for the Being who rescues us from Sin and an infernal type of Life. But we should not either vilify or distort Judaism. It gives the highest place to Prophets, not Pedants. It may, like every other living Institution, have some facets which appear unfair. But, we all recognize that this is a Religion which has been persecuted and which only survived because of the Virtue and steadfastness of successive generations of its adherents. Even so, it has all but disappeared from many places where it was at home for millenia. There are scarcely any Jews left in Iraq or Iran or, I believe, even Yemen or, more sadly for me, my ancestral South India- though in that case the exodus was purely voluntary and for a pure and spiritual motive.

Luc Ferry, a French philosopher, says

To conclude we could say that Christianity is the first universalist ethos; universalism meaning the doctrine or belief in universal salvation

Buddhism, Jainism and Vedanta predate Christianity. They affirm universal salvation for all sentient beings on the basis of the absolute equality, indeed univocity, of, either the soul or the 'cetana' consciousness.

 One of the most significant influences of the idea of universal dignity was with respect to the standing of the poor. Harper (2016, 139-141) argues that there was not even a social category called the “poor” in antiquity. The Christian message of the responsibility to care for the poor led to a radical rethinking of the concept of charity and was also manifested in the institutions of hospitals and orphanages. “’Charities’ ran hospitals, ministered to the poor in numberless ways, gave alms, sheltered travelers, ran leper houses, and cared comprehensively for the destitute and deprived” (Madigan 2015, 314)

 Ashoka did all these things across the length and breadth of the sub-continent long before Christ was born.

Christian monasteries also embodied a doctrine of human equality unusual for societies that were heavily influenced by Greek and Roman understandings of social class. Around 300 religious orders open to both men and women sprang up across the Mediterranean world. These organizations represented a radical break from the usual understanding of the importance of social origins since anyone willing to take the vows of the order could join, regardless of family or class background (Siedentop 2014, 95, 160). 

This is false. Admission to higher monastic or priestly orders was a matter of supply and demand. True, exceptional ability might make a path for itself. Otherwise, birth and lineage, or the 'dowry' a nun could bring with her, determined admission to wealthy or powerful orders. Canonnesses were almost always of noble or royal descent. Till about thirty years ago, you had to prove blue blood on both sides for several generations before you could become a Knight of Malta. Supply and 'effective' Demand (i.e. money) have equalized things- but that's how markets work.

Prof Hill speaks of the 'natural law' movement within the medieval Church. But this has its origins in the early Christian 'appropriation' or oikeiosis of Cicero. In other words, this is the Church re-Romanizing itself. But Roman Law was important because it permitted commercial flourishing. It was not till the second half of the Nineteenth Century that most European Cities could point to achievements in Civil Engineering that could match those of the Romans. To read Petronius was to enter a richer, more connected, world where a vulgar Levantine could rise by his own efforts to the level of a Maecenas. Christianity- in its more repulsively Anti-Semitic aspect- sought to combat this levelling tendency of Capitalist Industry. That is why Pound liked Petronius so much. 'In Usura hath no man a house'- coz Jews all be Shylocks right?

Prof Hill is not a historian. But surely he has enough general knowledge not to say anything quite as absurd as-

Martin Luther, in Freedom of a Christian (1520), did not develop a complete concept of political rights, but his case for the fundamental freedom of conscience became an important component in later formulations of rule of law arguments (Witte, 2006, 55-58)

 This is nonsense. We can look up that work on the internet and read it for ourselves. Luther was only speaking of Christians as having Lordship. Jews should fuck off or get killed. They are damned for all eternity in either case. Initially, no doubt, Luther was hopeful of converting the Jews. But he saw that even the convert Pfefferkorn was having no success in that department. So he adopted his hate ideology and demanded Jewish books be burnt.
Indeed, he went further-

 "What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews":^[1]

• "First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools … This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians …"
• "Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed."
• "Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing, and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them."
• "Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb …"
• "Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. For they have no business in the countryside …"
• "Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them …"
• "Seventh, I recommend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow … But if we are afraid that they might harm us or our wives, children, servants, cattle, etc., … then let us emulate the common sense of other nations such as France, Spain, Bohemia, etc., … then eject them forever from the country …"

Hill appears to rely on the following, utterly foolish, theory-

North, Wallis, and Weingast (2009) 15 provide a useful framework of understanding how solutions to the problem of violence lead to a particular type of political and economic structure.

Political and economic structures generate resources for violence. That is why they exist. Otherwise, the solution to the problem of violence is to run away and go hide yourself in some mountain redoubt.

They describe in some detail this system, which they call a limited access order, where a “dominant coalition contains members who specialize in a range of military, political, religious, political, and economic activities” 

So, there is division of labour paid for by extracting the greater portion of the 'gains from trade'. But this is all that currently exists. You move to a more developed area to better yourself and suddenly you are paying a greater portion of your Income in taxation. You now support a type of violence which you will seek to protect yourself from by joining or rising within the 'ruling coalition'. Yes, there is 'Tiebout sorting' but there are also 'Tiebout manorial rents' of a contestable type.

The members of the coalition maintain their position by offering benefits to each other.

This is a 'Pirate's game' whose Muth rational solution is to let 'Shapley values' determine relative shares.

Often the political rulers provide only limited access to particular forms of production.

No. They extract rents from production.

This produces rents for the economic elites in the form of monopoly profits, and in turn those elites support the political rulers.

No. Economic elites have high elasticity of supply and demand. That is what makes them elite. They have alternatives. There is rent contestation between economic and political elites. If production is inefficient, then economic elites try to buy political rents at home while trading offshore.

Religious elites offer legitimacy to the political order and in return they are able to use the coercive power of the state to further their ends.

Again, there is rent contestation with a similar result. Cardinals have never spurned the chance to exercise a Regent's power.

The authors also use the term the natural state to describe this social ordering because it has been the usual form of organization for most of recorded history. It evolves and is relatively stable because it mitigates the problem of violence.

Nonsense! It evolves because of external and internal threats. It is not stable. It doesn't mitigate shit. Look at Spain from the 1830's to the 1950s. Look at Lebanon now.

Economic growth is unlikely in such a system because of

incentive incompatible mechanisms- but this also means massive amounts of violence. Sell up and run away while the going is good.

the limits on economic opportunity and the lack of clear and enforceable property rights for everyone.

Only enforceability ('control rights') matters. Title can be completely opaque- as it often is in Japan.

This brings me to the obvious rejoinder to Hill's thesis. How come Japan is fifty percent richer than deeply Christian Portugal, which was unscathed by two World Wars? Why is Singapore twice as rich as Japan? How come Communist China has greatly overtaken Islamic Pakistan or deeply Spiritual India? Will Brazil under the soi disant Christian Bolsanor really do very much better than it did under the Socialist Lula?

Why did some countries achieve rapid economic growth while others stagnated? One important reason had to do with Religion being told to shut the fuck up and go stand in a corner drooling incontinently. Religious nutters are bad Economists. They are also shit at Science or anything else which is useful. They should spend their time praying with lunatics. When one such says 'the Nicaraguan horcrux of my neighbor's cat is compelling me to shit on the floor', they should reply 'The Metanoiac Tetragrammaton of my Charismatic Diakonia compels that Nicraguan horcrux to fuck off back to Hell. Please don't shit on the floor. The Arch-Bishop did so just the other day and the place still stinks. '

I am not saying that Socioproctology should not be considered a bona fide Religion or that I myself should not be venerated as a Prophet. However Religious nutters should be disintermediated from any utile discourse. Of course, this is also true of academic mathematical economists and other such oxymoronic creatures. But they should simply be micturated on periodically. One must not micturate on Priests. The do a great job expelling demons- my parents sent me to a Catholic school after watching the Exorcist- and tackling the growing Vampire epidemic. I may add, COVID is a hoax. The Vampires are using face-masks to hide their fangs. Yea, unto you I say, verily, the oceans shall dry up and the Sun will go visit its Sister in Australia- the one everybody says was knocked up by the Milk Man- and lo! Mike Pence will publicly sodomize Trump and the Heaven's will open and the Dead shall rise from their graves like in the Netflix series Zombie Apocalypse.'

Nussbaum on Tagore's cosmoplitanism

Moh Tzu's philosophy was 'cosmopolitan'. He went around gifting Defensive technology to every City in China so it could defend itself. He rejected 'kin selective altruism' in favor of pure Utilitarianism based on Universal Love.

To the best of my knowledge, Moh Tzu was the first and last genuine cosmopolitan. Why? He actually had useful knowledge to share. He was doing first order good of the sort his second order theory itself approved. No other cosmopolitanism has had this quality. There is anti-nationalism, certainly. There is the suspicion that patriots are vulgar or foolish or are scoundrels of some description. But then, 'woke' people are cynical of every type of virtue. A respectable house-wife must be a hooker. At the very least, she must secretly want to be a hooker.

For many, this is a convenient doctrine. If you are a worthless tosser, it is sensible for you to insinuate that those who aren't worthless tossers are actually Nazis. The alternative is to qualify as a Socioproctologist- which you can easily do by transferring $9.99 to my Pay Pal account. Only by so doing can you relieve yourself of the obligation to tell stupid lies.

Amartya Sen, being Bengali, may be forgiven for telling stupid lies about Tagore and the Shantiniketan where he was born so as to magnify his own antecedents. But why does Martha Nussbaum do so? She knows very well that Bengalis were a subject race ruled by the British. Tagore was one such slave- though, a cousin of his had the right to hold an umbrella over the Governor General's head on some ceremonial occasion. This may sound a very grand thing. But it was a badge of servitude. The Tagores had unjustly enriched themselves as compradors to the British, but Rabindranath took no pride in this ill gotten wealth. Nussbaum, however, thinks he was a 'cosmopolitan' rather than a patriot who felt his people to be too weak and unworthy to throw off their chains- at least, as yet.

In 1994 Nussbaum wrote in the Boston Review-

In Rabindranath Tagore’s novel, The Home and the World, the young wife Bimala, entranced by the patriotic rhetoric of her husband’s friend Sandip, becomes an eager devotee of the Swadeshi movement, which has organized a boycott of foreign goods.

An American patriot may boycott foreign goods because he wants to help American workers. But Sandip and Bimala were subjects of an Imperial Race, not citizens of a Nation State. 'Golden Bengal' had been impoverished. Even its wealthiest 'Kulin' bluebloods had to humiliate themselves before any and every European.  Sandip and Bimala wanted freedom. They were protesting against an action of the Viceroy which they believed would hinder their cause and delay a widespread rebellion. We don't call a slave who rebels against his master a patriot. We say he is a man who refuses to be a slave. He wants to be free.

The slogan of the movement is Bande Mataram, “Hail Motherland.” Bimala complains that her husband, the cosmopolitan Hindu landlord Nikhil, is cool in his devotion to the cause:

How did he get to be a landlord? The answer is that, like the Tagores, he was descended from a comprador- a collaborator- with the British. Nikhil is 'cool in his devotion' because he wants to keep his ill-gotten wealth. Tagore himself foresaw that the 'swadesi' movement would result in Hindu landlords like himself losing profitable estates in East Bengal, which is Muslim majority. As a matter of fact, Hindus were ethnically cleansed from there. Thus Tagore, for entirely rational, prudential, reasons kept 'patriotism' at a distance. But he was no cosmopolitan either. He remained an aristocratic Bengali who arranged 'suitable' marriages for his daughters.

He also inherited the leadership of a Unitarian Hindu sect, which is why he had to swan around in robes with a great big bushy beard, and this meant he spent a lot of time writing about the enmity that existed between orthodox Hindus and his own stupid sect.

Nussbaum pretends that this guy was a 'cosmopolitan' of the Stoic type. Thus she quotes the following from Tagore's novel-

And yet it was not that my husband refused to support Swadeshi, or was in any way against the Cause. Only he had not been able whole-heartedly to accept the spirit of Bande Mataram.
‘I am willing,’ he said, ‘to serve my country; but my worship I reserve for Right which is far greater than my country. To worship my country as a god is to bring a curse upon it.’

So, all the guy is doing is saying 'I'm Brahmo- i.e. a monist. I can't refer to the Motherland as a Deity because according to my Religion, that is rank idolatry. There is only one formless and transcendent God.' Of course, the fellow wasn't really 'serving his country' because that would entail not robbing his tenants in his role as a tax-farmer for the British. Furthermore, he would be using his wealth for some patriotic purpose.

Americans have frequently supported the principle of Bande Mataram,

No they haven't. Americans are generally either Christians or Jews or Muslims. They affirm monotheism. They don't say their Nation is a Goddess or that such and such ex-President has become a God. Mount Rushmore is not the scene of pagan sacrifices to apotheosized heroes.

giving the fact of being American a special salience in moral and political deliberation, and pride in a specifically American identity and a specifically American citizenship a special power among the motivations to political action.

American exceptionalism is a real thing. But Tagore affirmed Indian exceptionalism on the basis of India's supposed greater Spirituality as expressed by his own Brahmo Samaj. This was in line with Imperial Britain's division of labor. The English were the natural governors of the world. The Scots were canny businessmen and intellectuals. The Welsh were poetic. Ulstermen were great soldiers. The Irish were funny but crazy and thus unfit to rule themselves. The Indians were spiritual and even more unfit to rule themselves. Tagore endorsed this view- though there were moments when he flirted with the Revolutionaries and, later on, a stretch of time when he was financially dependent on Gandhian plutocrats.

I believe, with Tagore and his character Nikhil, that this emphasis on patriotic pride is both morally dangerous and, ultimately, subversive of some of the worthy goals patriotism sets out to serve—for example, the goal of national unity in devotion to worthy moral ideals of justice and equality.

Then Nussbaum should be perfectly happy as a subject of a German or Japanese or Russian or Chinese Empire. She should renounce Judaism, because the Jews rejected Greek cosmopolitanism- though Maccabbes 2 was composed in Greek- and rebelled against the Romans and put up a stiff necked opposition to conversion to the creed of their subsequent overlords. Furthermore, Nussbaum should denounce Washington for rebelling against George the Third. She should hate Lincoln for imposing national unity at the cost of much bloodshed.

Tagore did not think 'patriotic pride' a bad thing. Indeed, he sought to instil it in his fellow Bengalis. He warned, with a degree of prescience, that opposing the partition of Bengal was foolish. Antagonising the poorer class of Muslims was bound to lead to the destruction of his own class of people.

These goals, I shall argue, would be better served by an ideal that is in any case more adequate to our situation in the contemporary world, namely the very old ideal of the cosmopolitan, the person whose primary allegiance is to the community of human beings in the entire world.

This very old ideal gained salience as City-States and tribal Republics were replaced by vast bureaucratic Empires based on slavery or the subjugation of indigenous people.

My articulation of these issues is motivated, in part, by my experience working on international quality-of-life issues in an institute for development economics connected with the United Nations.

But that work was utterly worthless as is almost everything associated with the U.N

It is motivated, as well, by the renewal of appeals to the nation, and national pride, in some recent discussions of American character and American education. In a by now well-known op-ed piece in The New York Times (13 February 1994), philosopher Richard Rorty urges Americans, especially the American left, not to disdain patriotism as a value, and indeed to give central importance to “the emotion of national pride” and “a sense of shared national identity.” Rorty argues that we cannot even criticize ourselves well unless we also “rejoice” in our American identity and define ourselves fundamentally in terms of that identity. Rorty seems to hold that the primary alternative to a politics based on patriotism and national identity is what he calls a “politics of difference,” one based on internal divisions among America’s ethnic, racial, religious, and other sub-groups. He nowhere considers the possibility of a more international basis for political emotion and concern.

Nussbaum has now changed her views. Rorty died before Trump's MAGA triumphed over the Democrat's 'circular firing squad'

One might wonder, however, how far the politics of nationalism really is from the “politics of difference.”

There is little need to wonder. 'The politics of difference' involves the airing of Grievances and demanding compensation on the one hand and a 'backlash' by 'the silent majority' on the other. By contrast, Nationalism can bring everyone together- save for some antagonomic cretins who, in consequence, can be relegated to the lunatic fringe.

The Home and the World (better known, perhaps, in Satyajit Ray’s haunting film of the same title) is a tragic story of the defeat of a reasonable and principled cosmopolitanism by the forces of nationalism and ethnocentrism.

 No. Tagore's audience knew very well that Sandip was a revolutionary but one of bad character. Police Commissioner Tegart would capture him. He'd turn approver. Nikhil would be accused of having supplied him with funds. Even if Bimala confesses she stole it, the guy would still go to jail. The family would be ruined. The peasants would not pay their rent. Thus the Estate would be auctioned. Bimala would have to return to her own very poor family.

Like 'Gora', this novel is easily understood in context. The Hindu revolutionaries were slitting their own collective throats. The Muslims would take their wealth, help themselves to their women, and kill or chase them away. The better course was to let the Partition of Bengal stand and slowly sell property in the East so as to establish oneself on the right side of the border.

Tagore is believed to have been in contact with 'Red' Revolutionaries but it is also said that the Ghaddar patriots in America planned to assassinate him. Anyway, Tagore accepted a Knighthood in 1916 (when this book was published) though he had the grace to return it after Jallianwallah Bagh.

I believe that Tagore sees deeply when he sees that at bottom nationalism and ethnocentric particularism are not alien to one another, but akin—that to give support to nationalist sentiments subverts, ultimately, even the values that hold a nation together,

Who held India, or Bengal at that time, together? Tagore knew it was the British. His family would lose a lot of their wealth if the Revolutionaries drove the Brits out of the country. 'Ethnocentric particularism' meant Muslims would try to re-establish their rule over Hindus like Tagore. Indeed his grandfather had urged the Brits to send more White people to grab land in India because he said this would save the timid Hindu from the rapacious and virile Muslim. Niradh Chaudhri ends the first volume of his autobiography by pleading with the White Man to please, please, come back and rule over at least the Hindu portion of Bengal. Chaudhri emigrated to England a few years before Sen joined him there. But Chaudhri held 'Social Choice theorists' in low esteem probably because a lot of them were Bengalis and Chaudhri firmly believed Bengalis were utterly shite.

because it substitutes a colorful idol for the substantive universal values of justice and right.

Sen might say something like that. He hadn't Chaudhri's guts.

Once one has said, “I am an Indian first, a citizen of the world second,” once one has made that morally questionable move of self-definition by a morally irrelevant characteristic, then what, indeed, will stop one from saying, as Tagore’s characters so quickly learn to say, “I am a Hindu first, and an Indian second,” or “I am an upper-caste landlord first, and a Hindu second”?

Once one has said 'I am citizen of the Universe first, a citizen of the world second' one can ignore global warming or all out Nuclear War. But saying 'I'm a citizen of the world first' is no great advance. Why should you pay taxes or enlist in the Army simply to defend your own country? How is it morally justifiable to prioritize protecting oneself from conquest, or rape, or enslavement, rather than first helping those who have been longest conquered, or most frequently raped, or more pitiably enslaved? Indeed, what right have you to wipe your own bum when, for all you know, my bum may be in an unwiped condition?

Only the cosmopolitan stance of the landlord Nikhil

Nikhil is not 'cosmopolitan'. He is a subject of the King Emperor to whom he pays a lot in tax. If Britain goes to war with Germany, he is expected to stump up more money for Imperial Defence. Because he is Bengali, the Army doesn't want him. Had he been Punjabi, the D.C would have dropped a hint that he'd better present himself, along with the better built of his tenants, at the Army recruitment center.

—so boringly flat in the eyes of his young wife Bimala and his passionate nationalist friend Sandip—

The Bengali Revolutionaries deeply resented the prevalent prejudice against Bengalis as a meek and submissive race. Their hero was Bagha Jatin who killed a tiger which attacked him and who received a medal for this show of courage. A British Judge refused to prosecute him for beating up some White soldiers who had been misbehaving with Indian women. Police Chief Tegart paid an eloquent tribute to his courage- emphasizing that it was his own gallantry which led to his death.

It may be that if Tagore had not been the head of a boring Religious sect, he'd have deployed his own strong physique in the manner of Bagha Jatin.

Gandhi may have believed that 'Ahimsa' had magical powers. Tagore did not. There is only one God but God does not provide magical remedies.

has the promise of transcending these divisions,

Tagore knew this was a false promise. The thing was superstitious. There may have been some Brahmos who thought that if only the Hindus abandoned idolatry their station would rise but over the next seventy years they saw this was wishful thinking. Ramakrishna and Vivekananda had revitalized 'traditional' Hinduism. The Brahmos had lost salience. This is why Tagore's 'Gora'- which has a similar plot twist to Kipling's 'Kim'- is unreadable. The thing was anachronistic even at the time when it was published. Nobody gave a toss about Brahmos. They were perfectly respectable but as boring as shit.

because only this stance asks us to give our first allegiance to what is morally good—and that which, being good, I can commend as such to all human beings. Or so I shall argue.

Allegiances don't matter if you are a useless wanker. If you aren't and you decide to lexically preference 'what is morally good', then you will die immediately because it is morally wrong to breathe air when other people may be suffocating. You should first perform the kiss of life on all and sundry before selfishly oxygenating your own blood. Anyway, that's why I am not guilty of trying to kiss Beyonce- except it wasn't Beyonce but Wesley Snipes- not the Hollywood star Wesley Snipes, but a dude who was maybe 300 pound heavier which was lucky for me coz I could run away before he had a chance to thump me. Dunno why I just told you this. Sometimes I embarrass myself.

Proponents of nationalism in politics and in education frequently make a thin concession to cosmopolitanism.

So what? People who go in for pi-jaw make all sorts of concessions. Tell them you are homeless and need to borrow some money and they give you a wide berth.

They may argue, for example, that although nations should in general base education and political deliberation on shared national values, a commitment to basic human rights should be part of any national educational system, and that this commitment will in a sense serve to hold many nations together.

Rights are meaningless save under a bond of law linking them to incentive compatible remedies. It is perfectly sensible to want the Rule of Law and highly advantageous to extend this across borders.

This seems to be a fair comment on practical reality; and the emphasis on human rights is certainly necessary for a world in which nations interact all the time on terms, let us hope, of justice and mutual respect.
But is it sufficient?

It is not sufficient, it is useless. You can educate kids to demand, as an indefeasible moral and spiritual right, a fully functioned Disneyland in the backyard of every infant under the Sun. But this will have no practical effect. 

As students here grow up, is it sufficient for them to learn that they are above all citizens of the United States, but that they ought to respect the basic human rights of citizens of India, Bolivia, Nigeria, and Norway?

How stupid does Nussbaum think American students actually are? Do they really need to be taught that foreigners too are human beings? 

Or should they—as I think—in addition to giving special attention to the history and current situation of their own nation, learn a good deal more than is frequently the case about the rest of the world in which they live, about India and Bolivia and Nigeria and Norway and their histories, problems, and comparative successes?

Nussbaum believes she has learned about India. Yet, it is clear that she is completely ignorant of Tagore's background. If even an American Professor is such a cretin, why force American kids to listen to even more ignorant teachers telling stupid lies about Nigerian or Norwegian history? The thing is a waste of time.

Should they learn only that citizens of India have equal basic human rights,

like what? The right to settle in any part of the United States? The right to be elected POTUS? Indians have no such right. 

or should they also learn about the problems of hunger and pollution in India, and the implications of these problems for larger problems of global hunger and global ecology?

Neither. Teach them a bit of Econ and Environmental Science by all means. But don't saddle kids with cretinous instructors of Nusbaum's ilk.

What causes 'problems of hunger' in India? Nussbaum doesn't know. Sen doesn't know. I do. The thing is ideographic and varies across the country. But this knowledge of mine isn't particularly useful because shitheads like Nussbaum can get NGOs to bark madly up the wrong tree. Sen's economics creates famines. That is why the fool has been wholly disintermediated by the relevant Agencies.

Look at Scotland. They thought they should adopt a Sen-tentious approach to Hunger. Why? So as to suggest that wicked Tories are starving wee Scottish bairns. What was the result? The UN food rapporteur recommended that women be given more access to arable land so as to grow vegetables to feed their children! Sooner or later the Scots will grow tired of this sort of play-acting. If they want to pretend they are a starving Third World Country, that is how they will be treated.

Nussbaum advocates 'cosmopolitan education'. This is because many Americans, on meeting a foreigner assume that they are some type of plant. Nussbaum says-

The American student must learn to recognize humanity wherever she encounters it and be eager to understand humanity in its ‘strange’ guises.

It is equally important that American students learn to recognize that plants are not human. Shouting at a tree to get out of your way won't actually cause it to pluck its roots out of the soil so as to make way for you. Thus you may crash into a tree when skateboarding down the sidewalk.

One should always behave so as to treat with equal respect the dignity of reason and moral choice in every human being. It is this conception, as well, that inspires Tagore’s novel, as the cosmopolitan landlord

who would have no money if he didn't squeeze it out of his tenants regardless of their dignity

struggles to stem the tide of nationalism

rebelling against servitude to Whitey

and factionalism by appeals to universal moral norms. Many of the speeches of the character Nikhil were drawn from Tagore’s own cosmopolitan political writings.

Tagore had won the Nobel prize and was making money giving lectures around the globe so a to finance Shantiniketan. Because of his own family's position, he had to be very circumspect in what he said.

Stoics who hold that good civic education is education for world citizenship recommend this attitude on three grounds. First, they hold that the study of humanity as it is realized in the whole world is valuable for self-knowledge:

But Stoics had little conception of 'the whole world'. The education they imparted was in only one or two languages. It had nothing in common with the 'civics' Americans studied. Why? There was Slavery- indeed some Stoics ended up as Roman slaves. Elite Paideia was one route to enfranchisement. Soon, there was an Emperor. Even the patrician class was in danger. The 'Cursus Honorum' would give way to Military usurpers. In one sense, Greek Paideia triumphed. The Eastern Empire abandoned Latin for Greek. Byzantium flourished for centuries- thanks to the martial qualities of Slavic peoples.

we see ourselves more clearly when we see our ways in relation to those of other reasonable people.

Like the ability to distinguish Humans from Plants, this faculty requires no special education.

Second, they argue, as does Tagore, that we will be better able to solve our problems if we face them in this way.

Tagore does not make this argument. Why? He knew Britain. Even if he spent all his time lecturing the Master Race about how deserving Bengalis were of Independence, they would still have laughed in his face. Why? Because of the antics of other Bengalis. The plain fact is that there were far more Bengalis than there were British people. If Bengalis were capable of ruling themselves they were more than capable of seizing the means to do so. If they hadn't yet done any such thing then it was because, as Tagore's grandfather had argued from the 1820s onward, the Hindu Bengali was a coward and a poltroon who preferred British rule to Muslim rule because he could more easily rise by his cunning, or at least preserve his life and his religion by his supinity.

Stoicism had a mystical side. Stoics believed the truly Wise became, in some mysterious way, citizens of a 'cosmic city'. This could be linked to reincarnation- like the Indian notion that adherence to 'Ahimsa' gets you reborn in a paradisal world- or it might have some 'theurgic' effect in this world.

Finally, they insist that the stance of the kosmou politês is intrinsically valuable.

Only if one actually became a Sage. Otherwise, there might be reputational or other practical reasons for doing good but one would still fall short of the ideal.

For it recognizes in persons what is especially fundamental about them, most worthy of respect and acknowledgment: their aspirations to justice and goodness and their capacities for reasoning in this connection.

Nonsense! Stoicism says more than aspiration or capacity is required. You have to actually do good and then acquire wisdom so that there is a qualitative change in the good actions you perform.

This aspect may be less colorful than local or national traditions and identities—it is on this basis that the young wife in Tagore’s novel spurns it in favor of qualities in the nationalist orator Sandip that she later comes to see as superficial—but they are, the Stoics argue, both lasting and deep.

Nussbaum has read the book and seen the movie. She doesn't seem to have noticed that Sandip and Nikhil speak Bengali and dress in the style of the bhadralok. There was, and had been for almost a century, a Bengali 'cosmopolitan class' which dressed and dined in the European fashion and who spoke in English and French suffused with Latin epigrams and references to Greek literature. Raja Ram Mohun Roy had learned Greek and Latin and Hebrew. Michael Madhusudhan Dutt constantly referenced Ariosto and Petrarch. Aurobindo wrote a poetic romance titled 'Ilion' in 1908 linking the Bengali Freedom Struggle to Ancient Greece. But his contact with the Revolutionaries caused him to put aside his Classical education. He wrote 'If [India] is to model herself on the Anglo-Saxon type she must first kill everything in her which is her own. If she is to be a province of the British Empire, part of its life, sharing its institutions, governed by its policy, the fate of Greece under Roman dominion will surely be hers.' In other words, Cosmopolitanism was fading. Aurobindo and Tagore and Gandhi would all end up as Indian Sages of a vernacular appearance.

In Tagore’s novel, the appeal to world citizenship fails—fails because patriotism is full of color and intensity and passion, whereas cosmopolitanism seems to have a hard time gripping the imagination.

No. Bimala realizes that it is sinful to steal even if she stealing from her own husband. This is an assertion, not of Cosmopolitanism, but the Rule of Law. Gandhi's importance lay in his repeated proclamation of the need to obey the law even if that law had been imposed by alien conquerors. After his death, the Indian Constitution declared all law, including the British sedition laws under which Gandhi and Aurobindo had been jailed, to be autochthonous. By a legal fiction, they were deemed to spring from Ind's immemorial soil.

And yet in its very failure, Tagore shows, it succeeds.

The Rule of Law prevails, the Brahmo doctrine prevails, because the stupid and ugly woman from a poor family realizes that it feels really really bad to steal. Those who encourage you to break the law are evil. Also, it's nice to know, hubby gets jealous. Maybe, he can be provoked into giving wifey a proper seeing to.

For the novel is a story of education for world citizenship,

No. It is a morality tale about how stealing is wrong, okay? Don't steal. Just say no. Also all those young Revolutionaries running around aren't nice, they are nasty boys. Stay away from them.
Tagore drives this lesson home by causing Sandip to have a change of heart. He too expresses horror at the crime of theft. But he says he hasn't become a good man. He is running away because the Muslims will kill him. ”The Mussulmans, I am told, have taken me for an invaluable gem, and are conspiring to loot me and hide me away in their graveyard. But I feel that it is necessary that I should live. I have just twenty-five minutes to catch the North-bound train. So, for the present, I must be gone.' Nikhil is made of sterner stuff. He gallops off to save a Hindu neighbor from Muslim marauders. That's a noble death- protecting a co-religionist's treasury and harem from the greedy or lustful hands of those of a different faith. Nussbaum, cretin that she is, thinks this is about 'world citizenship'.

since the entire tragic story is told by the widowed Bimala, who understands, if too late, that Nikhil’s morality was vastly superior to Sandip’s empty symbol-mongering, that what looked like passion in Sandip was egocentric self-exaltation, and that what looked like lack of passion in Nikhil contained a truly loving perception of her as a person.

Sandip ran away from the Muslims. Nikhil fought them- or at least tried to. Then Independence came and Hindus ran away from the Muslim majority. A group of such refugees demanded a meeting with Nehru. Their Estates had been over-run and their Women were in danger. Nehru asked why they had run away leaving their wives and daughters in danger. He would not help them. Unlike the refugees from the Punjab who were prepared to kill Muslims to grab their land and thus compensate themselves, the Bengali Hindus got precious little compensation. They were regarded as cowards and poltroons. Their influence in India declined. The Bengali academic became a figure of fun. Like Mother Theresa, they advertised the worthlessness of their part of the world.

If one goes today to Santiniketan, a town several hours by train from Calcutta, the town where Tagore founded his cosmopolitan university Vishvabharati—whose name means “all the world”—one feels the tragedy once more.

Hilarious! I suppose Nussbaum thinks the Vishva Hindu Parishad is a organization for cosmopolitan Hindus to get together to dine on kobe beef! Bharati is both a reference to India as well as to the Hindu Goddess of learning. There is a Vedic allusion- Yatra Visvam Bhavatyekanidam- where the world makes its nest- which gives the name its pleasing poetic effect.

For all-the-world university has not achieved the anticipated influence or distinction within India,

Because it is a Government institution which has been captured by local yokels.

and the ideals of the cosmopolitan community of Santiniketan are increasingly under siege from militant forces of ethnocentric particularism and Hindu-fundamentalist nationalism.

This stupid woman wrote this in 1994! Shantineketan, as a Central Government University, was the preserve of the Congress party. But, it was the Left Front which ruled the State. Hindu fundamentalists were thin on the ground because they would have been beaten with vim and vigor. If anything, Shantiniketan is now even worse than it was. Out of 8500 students almost 8000 are local. There are about 800 on the faculty. God alone knows what they do.

And yet, in the very decline of Tagore’s ideal—which now threatens the very existence of the secular and tolerant Indian state—the observer sees its worth.

The then VC was later sent to jail for forgery. Such was the worth of the education there.

To worship one’s country as a god is indeed to bring a curse upon it.

Is a reasonable sentiment if you belong to a Monotheistic Religion and believe God will smite you for idolatry if you accord divine honors to anything but Him.

Recent electoral reactions against Hindu nationalism give some grounds for optimism that this recognition of worth is widespread and may prove efficacious, averting a tragic ending of the sort that Tagore describes.

Yet, it was around this time that the Communists cleared the way for the BJP to become the default National party because they wouldn't let Jyoti Basu become P.M. for some silly ideological reason. What was the result? Communist corruption and brutality caused the peasants to desert the party. Mamta Bannerjee then defeated the Left Front at the polls and her cadres beat the Commies with vim and vigor. Now, ex-Commies vote for the BJP because they don't want to keep getting beaten. In any case, they are waking up to the fact that Muslims are becoming a majority. Islam has never had a soft spot for Atheists. Thus their lives are more secure under Hindutva.

And since I am in fact optimistic that Tagore’s ideal can be successfully realized in schools and universities in democracies around the world, and in the formation of public policy, let me conclude with a story of cosmopolitanism that has a happy ending.

She has now changed her views. As for Shantiniketan, the place is so putrid it has become a UNESCO heritage site. 

It is told by Diogenes Laertius about the courtship and marriage of the Cynic cosmopolitan philosophers Crates and Hipparchia (one of the most eminent female philosophers of antiquity)—in order, presumably, to show that casting off the symbols of status and nation can sometimes be a way to succeed in love. 

Crates and Hipparchia copulated in the streets. Go thou and do likewise. That's what 'cosmopolitanism' is all about. According to newspaper reports, Shantiniketan's campus is littered with used condoms. Tagore must be so proud.