Thursday, 5 February 2026

Kalyvas on Civil War


Stathis Kalyvas's 'The Logic of Violence in Civil War' came out 20 years ago. It was deeply silly. Civil Wars differ greatly from each other. They have no common game-theoretic or other logical structure. 

It is sometimes said that Civil Wars are more savage but this isn't always the case. Where combatants face significant penalties for war-crimes, less of them occur. Where barbaric behaviour is rewarded, the opposite is the case. 

Civil war is defined as armed combat within the boundaries of a recognized sovereign entity between parties subject to a common authority at the outset of the hostilities.

The American Civil War fails to meet this criteria because, when it began, 'dual Sovereignty' was weighted towards the States not the Federation and secession occurred.  It wasn't till 1868, with the 14th Amendment, that the opposite was clearly affirmed.

Within civil war, my focus is on violence committed intentionally against noncombatants.

For what purpose? Ethnic cleansing? Religious conversion? Punishment for sin- e.g. that of having slaves? Collection of tribute? Sadism? The motives for violence are too varied for there to be anything to focus on. Moreover, there doesn't have to be a Civil War for massive violence to be inflicted on 'non-combatants'. 

This sort of violence is a phenomenon that has long remained off research limits 

For the same reason that people don't research the effect of farting on Feminists.  There is nothing sensible one can say on the topic. 

 because of its conceptual complexity and empirical opacity.

Stupidity 

To use Antoine De Baecque’s (2002:851) felicitous words, my goal is to bring reason to circumstances when reason is pushed to its limits.

We could use reason to explain why Feminists aren't offended by their own farts but get very angry when we lower our trousers and fart in their faces.  

From a methodological point of view, I show the importance of systematic research at the microlevel.

Farting is important from the methodological point of view because a person who doesn't fart will remain full of shit and eventually die.  

Typically, microlevel evidence tends to be marginalized as irrelevant or too messy. It is commonplace among historians that the “local” must be integrated with the “global”  yet efforts to do so rarely venture beyond the boundaries of the case study.

Why is there no general theory of farting in its relation to Feminists?

Here, I show a possible way of achieving this integration. I begin with a simplified and abstract characterization of violence in civil war,

i.e. one where uncorrelated asymmetries (which side you choose) have associated 'bourgeois strategies' with different pay-offs.  

yet one that stands on well-specified conceptual foundations.

He says modestly. But he is lying. He can't 'well-specify' shit.  

I analytically decouple civil war violence from civil war.

In which case you need to differentiate anarchy related violence caused by the curtailment or suspension of the rule of law and violence permitted, but not caused, by such conditions whose cause we can trace back to something related to the civil war itself. 

I show that despite its many different forms and the various goals to which it is harnessed across time and place, violence in civil war often displays some critical recurring elements.

Like farting. However, we will see they aren't critical at all. In other words, nothing would have changed if those elements had been omitted.  

Rather than just posit this point, I coherently reconceptualize

i.e. cherry pick 

observations that surface in tens of descriptive accounts and demonstrate that seemingly random anecdotes tend to be facets of the same phenomenon.

Women seldom applaud a truly stupendous fart. Women are more likely to be Feminists than men. It follows that there is a well defined and widely distributed correlation between farting and Feminism. Sadly, researchers have shied away from this important field.  

The positive component of the book consists of two parts: a theory of irregular war

which isn't necessarily a Civil War nor is a Civil War necessarily irregular 

and a microfoundational theory of violence (with two strands: indiscriminate and selective).

my farts are sometimes indiscriminate. Occasionally, I am able to selectively fart in the face of someone I dislike.  

Unlike existing work, the theory stresses the joint character of civil war violence, entailing an interaction between actors at the central and local levels,

there need be no such thing. 

and between combatants and noncombatants.

Which is the case in any type of conflict in a populated area.  

This interaction is informed by the demands of irregular war,

which are ideographic- i.e. dependent on local contingencies.  

the logic of asymmetric information,

which militates for signalling and screening mechanisms. Again, these will be ideographic.  

and the local dynamics of rivalries.

because two rivals for the poetry prize are likely to take advantage of a Civil War to stab each other- right?  

Hence the theory differs from existing accounts of violence that stress exclusively macrolevel motivations and dynamics, pinpoint overarching and preexisting cleavage structures, and characterize violence as “wanton,” “indiscriminate,” or “optimal” from the users’ point of view.

War matters. Smart people should analyse different types of War. Stupid people are welcome to focus on farting or whatever the fuck this cretin has hit upon. 

From the theory, I specify a model of selective violence that is consistent with the theoretical characterization, in which the interaction between actors operating at different levels results in the production of violence in a systematic and predictable way.

Useless shitheads love to speak of 'production' though all they can produce is shit.  

This exercise yields counterintuitive empirical predictions about the spatial variation of violence at the microlevel, which I subject to an empirical test using data I collected in Greece.

Which had a failed Commie insurrection. But the outcome would be decided outside Greece and would depend on what deal was struck between Soviets & the Anglo-Saxons. The odd thing about Kalyvas's book is that he spends a lot of time on the German occupation of Greece and the habit of local Albanians to denounce their relatives to the Germans. But that is a case of enemy occupation, not Civil War. 

Turchin's elite overproduction is overrated.

 

Societies are in equilibrium- i.e. stable- when, for all mission critical classes of society, expectations match outcomes. Ceteris paribus, a Society will be unstable when an important class of people either gain much more or much less than was foreseen. Instability isn't a bad thing. If some make unanticipated gains because their productivity rose, this could have Tardean mimetic effects which raise productivity across the board. What if an important segment of society faces a much bleaker future than had been anticipated? Might this not precipitate a revolution? The answer, generally speaking, is no. Kill a few thousand malcontents and show that you are just warming up and suddenly there are no malcontents. 

What if the malcontents are 'elite'- i.e. stand out from the crowd by reason of superior intelligence, education or arduously acquired skill? The answer is elites can be killed just as easily as non-elites. Moreover, kicking their heads in brings joy to the hearts of horny handed peasants and the sort of decent, god-fearing, pimp we find in the humbler class of speakeasy or honkytonk.  

Peter Turchin grew up in Soviet Russia which certainly had plenty of very bright people- like his father- who might be called an elite though they also tended to be in greater danger from the KGB.

About 15 years ago he published his influential theory of Elite overproduction 

which describes the condition of a society that has an excess supply of potential elite members relative to its ability to absorb them into the power structure. This, he hypothesizes, is a cause for social instability, as those left out of power feel aggrieved by their relatively low socioeconomic status.

People who feel aggrieved about not having enough to eat- more particular if they are soldiers & policemen- can indeed cause 'social instability'. So can the desire to kill and eat the rich- or at least those of the rich who belong to the wrong religion or region or whatever. But, it would be truer to say that such a society is collapsing or that it is not currently viable that to say it is unstable.

Some countries have traditionally had an elite administrative & military cadre. The French "énarque"- or graduate of France's elite ENA school- is an example. But we might also speak of elite schools or Colleges or particular academic programs (e.g. the Harvard MBA program or Yale Law School) or particular enterprises (Goldman Sachs, McKinsey) which are disproportionately represented amongst the ranks of the 'great and the good' or the 'movers and shakers'. Do such institutions overproduce? They may do but elites are generally smart enough to do 'product differentiation'- i.e. find a way to reclassify themselves so as to restrict supply. That's why some people who went to Eton & Oxford end up teaching Classics while others move effortlessly between the Treasury or the Foreign Office and the top Merchant Banks or Hedge funds. Indeed, they might even decide that spending a couple of years as Prime Minister might be a way of giving back to the community. 

Turchin writes- 
As a term in sociology, elites are simply a small segment of the society who concentrate social power in their hands.

Sociology is the province of stupidity. It is obvious that elites perpetuate themselves even when 'social power' changes hands. The suave Mandarin can serve a Minister who was a coal miner just as easily as he can serve an Aristocrat or a self-made billionaire.  

They are the power-holders (and I increasingly use this term in my lectures, to avoid confusing them with those “latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading” folks that the right-wingers love to hate).

You aren't a power-holder if there's a guy who tells you what to do. In China, Chairman Xi is that guy. This doesn't mean China doesn't have an elite.  


Next question, what is social power? Answer: ability to influence other people’s behavior.

If that behaviour does not entail compliance for some purpose of maintaining or extending power then 'social power' is irrelevant. We may imitate Borat or Ali G or the KPop singer 'Psy'. But fictional personae have no social power.  

Sociologists such as Michael Mann distinguish four sources of social power: military (coercion),

that is military power. It isn't social power. Only if the Army takes over the country can it gain sufficient political power to attain the power to dictate behaviour across large swathes of society.  

economic, administrative or political, and ideological.

what about cultural, aesthetic, religious, spiritual, moral etc. ?  

Put simply, there are many ways to influence people behavior.

Behaviour is mimetic and affected by incentives. Provide a better mimetic target or incentivize others to do so. That's it. That's the whole story.  

I can make you to do something by force,

by giving you the incentive of not having your head kicked in if you imitate the actions of the person I consider to be compliant with my order

or a threat of force;

i.e. 'expected disutility'

I can pay you to do it;

That is not an exercise of social power. It is just buying and selling- i.e. exercising spending power.  

I can order you;

if you are an agent, employee or otherwise obliged to follow my directions 

or I can persuade you.

In which case, it is you who have the power to decide whether to listen to me or tell me to fuck off.  

The last is one of the most important, if often underappreciated, forms of social power.

No. We understand that an enterprise with a lot of money can hire very smart Advertising or PR professionals to persuade us to buy all sorts of trash or to vote for all sorts of morons.  

The bottom line is that in a liberal, democratic, country, money talks to a certain extent but various types of countervailing power exist.

In most situations, different kinds of power are combined in various proportions. For example, military officers primarily influence the behavior of soldiers by giving them direct orders (political power), but this is buttressed by the threat of court martial (coercion).

This may be true of the Russian army or a conscript army under conditions of total war. Otherwise, the sanction which applies to a non-compliant soldier is the same as in private enterprise- viz. denial of career advancement and, possibly, being fired for cause.  

Most effective power involves all four components. Thus, a charismatic military chief (think Alexander the Great) gives direct orders through the chain of command, rewards followers with loot, hangs the deserters, and inspires his followers to fight for an idea.

Fuck has this to do with elites?  

Although the elites governing a country

may not be an elite at all. The thing may be like Jury duty or 'Buggin's turn'. Elites may be perfectly content to let boring bureaucrats or stodgy socialists or brain-dead aristocrats do the governing. Deciding policy is what really matters. But skilled courtesans may be better able to do this. Aspasia was no better than she should be. Theodora took it up every orifice and clamoured for yet more dicks.  

use a combination of all four kinds of power, there is a lot of variation in how ruling elites are recruited and from whom.

A governing class may not be elite. It may be hereditary or 'representative' in the sense of average and undistinguished or it may be merely a matter of 'Buggin's turn'.  

Interestingly enough, an elite deriving its power from a particular source tends to dominate others. For example, in Egypt it’s the military elites. Modern Egypt has been ruled by generals from Nasser to Sadat to Mubarak, and now (after a brief intermission) by Sisi.

Military regimes generally hand over the day-to-day administration to a technocratic elite which rose through public sector institutions.  

China, France, and Russia have traditionally been ruled by administrative elites.

No. It is not the case that the most promising young Mandarin will end up as President though I suppose it could happen- look at Macron.  

In Russia during the last Time of Troubles of the 1990s, a clique of wealthy billionaires, known as “oligarchs,” attempted to install themselves as the ruling elite. But they were easily defeated by the bureaucrats, led by Putin.

A KGB man. We suspect that he was good at killing people.  

Some oligarchs were exiled, another ended up in prison and then was exiled, and the rest accepted subordinate positions in the political order.

Fuck does this have to do with elites? We are talking of gangsterism of a repulsive kind. It isn't the case that Putin represents the finest flower of the Russian academy.  

In the United States coercive power is thoroughly controlled by the political leaders.

No. It is a country under the rule of law- though maybe not so much under Trump.  

Political (and ideological) bases of power, in turn, are subordinated to the economic elites.

No. 'Bases of power' are Governorships, seats in Congress or City Hall etc. Money can certainly alter outcomes where offices are elective. But any vested interest group- or just a bunch of pissed off proles- can put some money together or create a grass-roots organization to turn out the vote.  

I won’t go into details here, just note that power is exercised indirectly and in subtle ways.

No. Power is exercised directly and in legal ways which are matters of public record unless they are classified for reasons of National Security. 

Those interested in understanding how this works should read William Domhoff’s Who Rules America (see also his web site) or Chapter 4 of Ages of Discord. The conclusion that we reach is that, to a first approximation, American power holders are wealth holders.

As opposed to hobos. America is a wealthy country. Smart people tend to be more productive and thus get wealthier. There was a sort of 'cursus honorum' tradition whereby the rich dude felt he needed to 'give back' by spending a bit of time in Government. Oddly, the Ambassador who had made a big donation to the President's campaign was often just as good or better than the career diplomat.  

Thus, a pretty good answer to the question, who are the elites in America? is “those whose personal worth exceeds X million dollars.”

It is a shitty answer. Currently, the US has  2.3 million decamillionaires (individuals with a net worth, including assets like trust funds, of $10 million or more). We are speaking of a 'lucky sperm' club, not an elite. 

What is X? It’s somewhat arbitrary, but it’s around 5-10 million as the following graph suggests:




You can see from the chart, that if you want to be in the proverbial 1 percent, you need to amass at least $7.8 million.

You read this and bought bitcoin at 50 dollars a dozen years ago. You sold last year at 126,000. Congratulations! You are part of the 1 percent. Are you of the 'elite'? No. You just got lucky like the shut-in in the trailer park who won the lottery.  


An alternative way to define the elites would be to start enumerating the most important political offices and bureaucratic positions, from the US president down; the officers of Fortune 500 companies; the owners and editors-in-chief of major media companies; major donors to politicians, and so on. But you would end up pretty much with the same group of people, because the great majority of these people would also be significant wealth holders.

No. You would have excluded those who are stupid but who got a good alimony settlement or had a Mafia boss for a grandfather.  

In America, wealth (economic power) is very closely correlated with overall social power.

Correlation is not causation. Turchin doesn't have a Structural Causal Model. He is just waving his hands and saying 'there are too many millionaires. No wonder things are turning to shit.' The truth is 'elites' are themselves capable of screening and signalling such that they differentiate themselves from the broader class they sprang from. Not every Old Etonian got to be Prime Minister in the last decade. It was just two of the stupider ones who did it on a dare because the alternative was to have to truthfully confess to the number of times they had bummed each other. 

Leaving aside elites, what happens if lots of people make investments expecting one outcome but are disappointed to find they were mistaken? Consider the problem of 'educated unemployment'- i.e. guys with degrees or even Doctorates who can't get jobs. India has this problem in acute form. Is it causing 'instability'? No. People realize that they were taught worthless shite & don't really have any skills. The same thing happened to other over-credentialized people around the world. The good news is, young people are resilient. They may find a better path for themselves than any their Professors could have prepared them for. 


Wednesday, 4 February 2026

Ghalib's Ghazal 78- 2 verses



Longing's sigh longs for, but, Love's life-sentence to be prolonged
Not by climbing curls did Zal come to- whom Anqa e'er belonged
Leviathan is the myriad mouth of every post-Flood wavelet
Till our tears become pearls & Indra's net- Eyes forget.

Ivrim, Arya & Crap's Messiah


That everything is entangled because of radical fungibility
Is the insight of Natanson, Bose & Statistical stability
For aught that endures incurs, higher than haecceity, a cost
Hindus & Hebrews- kategoros of their own Holocaust.

Envoi
Peace hath a Prince! Tho' Maths & Music, mutually, are Maya
Harmonic traps- Ivrim or Arya- All craps' Messiah. 

Tuesday, 3 February 2026

Teltumbde telling lies about Godse



Ambedkarite politics is based on hatred of Brahmins (though Ambedkar's second wife was Brahmin). Their political program was based on Churchill's speech 'our duty in India' given in March of 1931 which insisted that 'Gandhi stands for the substitution of Brahmin domination for British rule in India.' Churchill believed Gandhi to be a charlatan or a simpleton who had been given command of the Congress only so as to pull the wool over the eyes of the British, the Muslims & the 'depressed classes'. Churchill said 'Already Nehru, his young rival in the Indian Congress, is preparing to supersede him the moment that he has squeezed his last drop from the British lemon'. 

Nehru was aware of Churchill's views. He saw that 'federation', which Churchill championed, would leave the Brits in charge and thus became the strongest voice for a unitary India- a fact which Rahul doesn't seem to understand. Interestingly, in his Autobiography, he called for the 'Brahminization' (as opposed to Baniaization) of India. Gandhi was a bania- i.e. a businessman just as the Brits were a 'nation of shopkeepers'. 

Churchill's intellectual heirs are firstly the Pakistanis- who embrace the two nation theory that he propounded. Secondly, the DMK in Tamil Nadu which is the successor of the 'Justice Party' and which holds 'sanatan dharma' as anathema. Thirdly, we have the Ambedkarites. Indeed, Ambedkar himself welcomed the killing of the Mahatma. At the time, he wrote as follows in a private letter- 

 "My own view is that great men are of great service to their country, but they are also at certain times a great hindrance to the progress of the country. Mr Gandhi had become a positive danger to this country," 

"He had choked all the thoughts. He was holding together the Congress which is a combination of all the bad and self-seeking elements in society

this is precisely the gravamen of Churchill's 1931 speech. His own Tory colleagues thought he was mad. Brahmins couldn't be uniquely evil. If there were corrupt and cowardly Brahmins, the same could be said of every other community.  

who agreed on no social or moral principle governing the life of society except the one of praising and flattering Mr Gandhi. Such a body is unfit to govern a country," 

Idolatry of Ambedkar or Periyar, on the other hand, is perfectly fine.  

"As the Bible says that sometimes good cometh out of evil, so also I think good will come out of the death of Mr Gandhi. It will release people from bondage to supermen, it will make them think for themselves and compel them to stand on their own merits," 

Sadly Ambedkar & his pal J.N Mandal (who was Jinnah's law minister) had no merit. Mandal had to run away to India. Ambedkar couldn't get elected to Parliament. Without the Brits to prop them up, they collapsed. 

Anand Teltumbde is married to a grand-daughter of Ambedkar. He writes in 'the Wire'-  

Reflections on the Murder of Gandhi and the State of India

Gandhi’s murder cannot be viewed merely as an event of the past.

Nor can the pogrom carried out against Brahmins in Pune by the Congress party.  

It marked the beginning of an ongoing project.

As did the killing of two other people with the surname 'Gandhi'.  

January 30, 1948 was not an end; it was the first shot in a long war against pluralism,

the country had been partitioned. Pluralism was dead in the water. Ambedkar may have dismissed his contribution to the Constitution as 'hack work' but, the fact remains, the Constitution is unitary and it stripped Muslims of any type of affirmative action (e.g. such as had been given to Muslim Dalits by the 1935 GoI Act)  

secularism,

Cow protection is a Directive Principle 

and constitutional democracy in India.

The Constitution creates a unitary State with an overmighty Centre. Moreover, it permits its own suspension as Mrs. Gandhi's opponents discovered during the Emergency.  


Reflections on the Murder of Gandhi and the State of India

Seventy-seven years ago, on January 30, 1948, three bullets struck down Mahatma Gandhi at a prayer meeting in Birla House. The gunman, Nathuram Godse, was a Chitpavan Brahmin from Pune.

The previous assassination attempt was made by a Punjabi refugee some of whose family had been massacred by Muslim mobs. He was angry that Gandhi was saying the refugees should go back while Muslims who had fled should be allowed to return.  

It was however no simple act of homicide. It was the Brahminical ideology

Madanlal Pahwa was Khatri 

that sought to exterminate Gandhi’s plural, inclusive vision of India

which had already been exterminated by Jinnah 

as an obstacle to a project of Hindu supremacy

established by Nehru & Indira  

and a nostalgic yearning for a restored Peshwai order.

This is the crux of the matter. Ambedkar had got it into his head that the Peshwas had discriminated against his community. This was the line that British officials were pushing in the Nineteenth century. Gokhale must be just as bad as Tilak because both are Chitpavan. But the founders of the RSS weren't Chitpavan.  

The assassin did not act in isolation. He was backed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)

No. The RSS wasn't stupid or crazy. Killing Gandhi was foolish. If it must be done, get a Muslim to do it.  

and the Hindu Mahasabha, and blessed by V. D. Savarkar

who had suffered so much when in prison that he wasn't quite sane

the father of Hindutva.

He only adopted it after the War when it became obvious that the Brits were on the way out. The question was whether they could leave India weak by creating an artificial coalition of Muslims, Dalits, Dravidians & the Princes as a check to the Hindu majority. Thanks to Nehru, the answer was no.  

After the assassination, the RSS sought to distance itself from Godse. But historians like D.N. Jha

who was so shit at history that he said there was never any temple at the Ram Janambhumi.  

demolished that claim.

By lying.  

In his memoir, Godse’s brother Gopal Godse himself confessed that all the Godse brothers had been associated with the RSS at the time of the murder.

They were also associated with the King Emperor because, in law, they were his subjects. OMG! King killed Gandhi!  

Public anger followed reports that RSS members had celebrated the murder by distributing sweets in parts of Maharashtra provoked public attacks on Brahmin houses at many places. 

Distribution of sweets should be banned. It provokes 'public attacks'. Jews were distributing sweets in Poland. That is why Hitler was provoked into attacking that country.  

Ideological disposition

The historical disposition of Brahminical ideology has been to secure and preserve supremacy over the religio-social and cultural order,

So, Churchill was right! Indian 'freedom struggle' was actually a cunning Brahmin plot! Ambedkar should be praised for serving the Brits. Jagjivan Ram should be castigated for going to jail.  

rather than to exercise political power directly. Within the varna hierarchy, rulers who wielded temporal authority were placed below Brahmins, their legitimacy dependent on rituals, codes, and moral sanction controlled by them.

Very true. Brahmin priests controlled British & Muslim rulers.  

This deeply entrenched hierarchy shaped Brahminical attitudes towards political power, particularly when external forces entered the subcontinent. As a social group, Brahmins were rarely opposed to being ruled by outsiders;

Peshwa didn't fight the British. He distributed sweets. That provoked the Brits to attack him.  

instead, they tended to accommodate and even support the dominant power, provided it guaranteed the preservation of their social hegemony.

Very true. Brahmins in Pakistan supported Muslim League. J.N Mandal was actually a Brahmin.  

There is no sustained historical instance of Brahmins as a community organising resistance to an external ruling power merely on the grounds of foreignness.

Just as there is no historical instance of Ambedkarites telling the truth.  

Even under Muslim rule – so relentlessly vilified in contemporary Hindutva discourse – Brahmin elites adapted, served as advisers, administrators, and intellectual intermediaries, and secured their privileged position within the social order. This pattern repeated itself under British rule.

Smart people do well. Ambedkar did well. His Brahmin wife must have been controlling him.  

The only moment of collective Brahminical rage was provoked not by colonial domination per se, but by the defeat of the Peshwai in Pune – the singular historical instance of direct Brahmin political sovereignty.

Because Brahmins were seldom Kings. This proves they must have been controlling Kings- more particularly British Emperors of India.  

The subsequent rebellions, including participation in the events of 1857 (later romanticised by Savarkar as the “First War of Independence”), were driven less by a universal anti-colonial vision than by the desire to restore lost Brahmin rule.

Mangal Pandey was a Brahmin. Thus, he was very evil.  

Even here, the acceptance of Bahadur Shah Zafar’s nominal leadership illustrates a familiar strategic flexibility: political alliances were negotiable, so long as the deeper structure of social dominance could ultimately be reclaimed.

Did you know Brahmins are dominating Pakistan? Field Marshall Munir is secretly wearing janeo.  


Birth of Hindu consolidation

In Indian history, most external groups that entered the subcontinent eventually settled, assimilated, and made India their home.

Unless like Nadir or Abdali, they were content to simply loot it and then withdraw- no doubt, because they were secretly wearing janeo.  

The British – and other Europeans – were different. They arrived as merchant capitalists, captured political power to secure commercial interests, and never intended permanent cultural integration.

A.O Hume, founder of the Congress party, was a vegetarian Vedantist advocated cow protection on agronomic grounds. 

This distinction mattered.

The Brits didn't want to lose power to a miscegenated Creole caste.  

For Brahminical elites, the real historical disruption had come earlier from large-scale conversions of marginalised castes to Islam,

plenty of Brahmins converted to Islam. Iqbal was related to Sapru. Incidentally, Acharya Kripalani's elder brother had become a Muslim.  

which weakened their demographic and cultural monopoly. Islamic civilisation posed a sustained challenge to their authority, creating a deep, if often tacit, resentment toward Muslim rule.

Why did J.N Mandal run away from Pakistan? Do Dalits in that country not feel any resentment to 'Muslim rule'?  

When the British defeated the Muslim powers, they were naturally happy.

As were Dalits.  

The British, unlike earlier rulers, were expected eventually to depart. By the mid-nineteenth century, it became clear that preparations had to begin for reclaiming political authority by exterminating Muslims as the competitors.

By contrast, Muslims never dreamed of re-establishing a Caliphate.  

This shift is traceable to eastern Bengal,

which is where J.N Mandal came from. He got the Namasudras in Sylhet to vote for joining Pakistan. They soon had to run away from there.  

where Brahminical elites felt threatened by Muslim numerical strength and by colonial policies that empowered Muslim peasantry.

Tagore warned his people not to cut their own throats by supporting the Freedom struggle. 

Religion was increasingly mobilised to consolidate Hindu identity against the “Muslim other.”

While J.N Mandal was mobilizing Dalits to vote for the Muslim brother. But he soon had to run away.  


The intellectual fountainhead of this turn was Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay (1838–1894). In his later novels – Anandamath, Devi Chaudhurani, and Sitaram – Bankim articulated a vision that cast Muslim rule as civilisational darkness and imagined Hindu regeneration through militant unity.

Meanwhile, plenty of Muslims were talking of killing kaffirs the way God commanded us to do. 

Anandamath (1882) depicted Hindu ascetics rising violently against Muslim authority and introduced Vande Mataram, equating the nation with Hindu goddess imagery, implicitly excluding Muslims and Christians from the imagined community.

Ambedkarites think Hindus are very evil for not wanting to live under Muslim rule. But, J.N Mandal- Ambedkar's most important ally- had to run away from such rule.  

Bankim’s project was clearly anti-Muslim.

Because Muslims are against kaffirs.  

British rule was portrayed as a one that had ended Muslim dominance and thus as benefactor.

This is also what Raja Ram Mohan Roy & Dwarkanath Tagore thought. But the Peshwai regime disagreed.  

Thinkers such as Ahmed Sofa

who wasn't actually a Sofa 

later observed that Bankim was among the first to articulate the dream of a Hindu Rashtra.

He himself supported the dream of a Bengali Muslim Rashtra.  

Organisationally, this vision was seeded through movements like the Hindu Mela of 1867, led by figures such as Debendranath Tagore, Nabagopal Mitra, and Rajnarayan Basu.

The last two were Kayastha, not Brahmin.  

These gatherings, often described as “national,” were explicitly Hindu in character, defining Indian identity through religious symbolism and excluding Muslims from the cultural imagination. The ideological seed had been sown.

It is fair to say that Hinduism was the 'seed' of Indian nationalism. It is what holds the country together. That is why anti-nationals hate it. Yet, without a strong India, they too will suffer. Like J.N Mandal, they may have to run away to some place where kaffirs are protected.  


The birth and shaping of the RSS

Two Marathi Medical Students in Calcutta before the Great War were inspired by the 'Anushilan Samitis' of 'Jugantar'. Later on, Dr. Hardikar founded the Congress Seva Dal which his pal, Hegdewar, joined. When it appeared likely that the Seva Dal would be banned. Hegdewar founded the RSS. By then, communal riots had become widespread as local politicians jockeyed for power. 

Reform currents within Hindu society arose along two tracks: Western-educated reformers seeking modernisation,

i.e. Brahmo & Prarthana Samaj 

and orthodox revivalists seeking a return to scriptural “originals.”

Which was also the claim of the Brahmos & Prarthana Samajis.  

The most influential of the latter was the Arya Samaj, founded by Dayanand Saraswati, a Gujarati whose movement found its strongest base in Punjab.

Arya Samaj is anti-casteist. Its leaders belong to different castes.  Since Indian Arya Samajis are patriots of India (just as British Arya Samajis are British patriots) they are very evil. 

After his death in 1883, its followers decided to establish Hindu Sabhas, culminating in the foundation of Punjab Hindu Sabha on December 16, 1906 under leaders such as Lal Chand,

a Khatri 

U.N. Mukerji,

Bengali Brahmin 

and Lala Lajpat Rai.

from a Jain Agrawal family. 

This consolidation of Hindu organisational politics was mirrored among Muslims. On December 30, 1906, Muslim elites gathered in Dhaka to found the All-India Muslim League under figures including Khwaja Salimullah, Aga Khan III, and Hakim Ajmal Khan, to articulate Muslim socio-economic and political concerns.

It had predecessors in the 1880s.  

While the Muslim League evolved into a political counterweight to the Congress – widely seen as the majority organisation – the Hindu Mahasabha made little headway beyond a largely upper-caste constituency.

It decided to follow an appeasement strategy in 1916. That is why it promoted Motilal Nehru & Mahatma Gandhi.  

In the interwar years, the rise of fascism in Italy under Benito Mussolini impressed sections of India’s right wing.

Mussolini impressed Gandhi, Tagore, Iqbal & Bose.  

Marathi journals associated with Bal Gangadhar Tilak praised European nationalist icons such as Giuseppe Mazzini. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and his brother Ganesh had earlier founded Abhinav Bharat, inspired by Mazzini’s Young Italy. Though Savarkar once influenced revolutionary circles in England, his incarceration in the Cellular Jail marked a turn: he submitted mercy petitions to the British

because a lot of other prisoners were given an amnesty. The fact is, the Brits had conceded the principle of transfer of power. The only question was whether Hindus would be masters in their own house. Gandhi only had salience when it appeared that he could deliver a united India strong enough to protect minorities if not its own borders (because the Royal Navy would remain necessary till India built up its own fleet. The first Indian admiral was only appointed in 1958.) 

and later articulated Hindutva as a political doctrine for Hindu consolidation.

Hindutva is ecumenical and anti-casteist. Since this is good for India, it is very evil.  

B.S. Moonje,

a Doctor who had seen service in the Boer war. 

a Savarkar associate

a Tilak associate. The Savarkars were junior to him.  

and mentor to K.B. Hedgewar,

and Hardikar 

the founder of the RSS drew organisational lessons from Mussolini’s youth brigades

No. He was imitating what his pal Hardikar had already done at the end of 1923. There may have been a member of the Seva Dal committee who had returned from Italy and who knew about the Black Shirts. However, the inspiration for Seva Dal was Bengal's 'Anushilan Samitis' from before the Great War. I should mention that all the nationalists of the period paid reverence to Sri Aurobindo who was in exile in Pondicherry.  

and shaped RSS as a secretive militant organisation.

A voluntary organization which is a cross between the Boy Scouts & the Rotarians.  

The RSS, from its inception, kept itself aloof from the anti-colonial struggle.

It was an over-ground 'social' organization which, it was hoped, would not be banned when the Seva Dal was banned. Nehru was an enthusiastic member of the Seva Sal.  

Myths and falsehoods

Stupid myths and falsehoods are Teltumbde's stock in trade.  

The Hindutva movement is deliberately founded on the myths and falsehoods.

It is founded on the vision of a Hinduism purged of hereditary distinctions of caste and sectarian squabbles about dogma. Since it is good for India, anti-nationals hate it.  

It follows the Goebbelsian dictum that “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.,”

That is the Ambedkarite stock in trade. The problem is that repeating stupid lies causes people to think you are a stupid liar. Nobody cares if you rot in jail.  

The propaganda machine assumes bigger importance in this than the truth. The RSS followed this dictum in its tenacious spread.

No. It followed the dictum that if you are part of a voluntary organization, then you need to be polite and to behave decently. It is this ingrained habit which has helped RSS pracharaks to rise. Other Sangh Parivar outfits may lack this organizational ethos.  

At his trial, Nathuram Godse read a 92 page hand-written statement justifying killing of Gandhi. Each reason he cited rested on a selective or false reading of events.

Sadly, there was more truth in them than in any tome written by Teltumbde.  

Partition of India: Godse blamed Gandhi for “vivisecting” the nation.

Gandhi could have launched an agitation to prevent it. There is such a thing as 'command responsibility'.  

In fact, Gandhi opposed Partition to the end

by going on a fast? He would do that in order to get India to pay money to Pakistan despite ongoing hostilities. The truth is he didn't oppose Partition. It is a different matter that it saddened him.  

and held no executive authority;

yet he had been acclaimed by Govind Vallabh Pant, Premier of UP, as the Il Duce & Fuhrer of India'. He had command responsibility even if he held no legislative or executive office.  

the decision emerged from negotiations among the British, the Congress leadership, and the Muslim League amid spiralling communal violence.

Ambedkar supported Partition. So did his pal, J.N Mandal. But Mandal had to run away to India.  


“Muslim appeasement”: He claimed Gandhi “privileged Muslims over Hindus”,

true enough. He actually offered Jinnah the post of Prime Minister of a united India.  

citing Gandhi’s fasts and support for Hindustani.

India decided Godse, not Gandhi, was right. Hindi in Devanagari script is the official language.  

Those fasts in Calcutta and Delhi sought to stop retaliatory killings

they failed utterly.  

and restore civic peace for all citizens, while Hindustani was proposed as a bridge language in a deeply divided society.

India decided it didn't need no stinkin' bridge.  

Release of Rs 55 crores to Pakistan: Godse treated this as Gandhi’s betrayal.

It was. There's a good reason Congress did little to keep the Maha-crackpot safe.  

The transfer was a Cabinet decision honouring financial commitments made at Independence; Gandhi’s fast pressed for communal peace in Delhi,

this failed. The Muslim percentage of the population dropped from 33 to 5 percent. Nehru brought in a law to prevent Muslim refugees who had fled in panic from returning to India and reclaiming their property. 

not for overriding state policy.

State policy was right to override the Mahacrackpot.  

Non-violence (ahimsa): Godse argued that Gandhi’s creed weakened Hindus.

Gandhi, writing after the Second World War broke out, said Congress was the party of the High Caste Hindus. They were devotees of Ahimsa- i.e. shit at fighting. Thus the Brits should hand over the Army to Congress otherwise the Muslims & the Punjabis (regardless of creed) and perhaps also the Gurkhas, would take over the country. The anal cherries of the Dalits might be protected by the Ahimsa fairy, but, otherwise, the Hindus would be reduced to destitution and virtual enslavement. 

Godse was right to say that Gandhi's creed weakened Hindus. It also weakened India. If the majority won't fight, even the minorities are fucked.  

Gandhi’s non-violence was a mass political strategy against colonial rule and communal hatred,

which failed utterly the moment it was tried 

not a denial of a state’s right to maintain order or defend citizens.

Gandhi thought the Brits should hand over their country to Hitler. He didn't think the British state had a duty to fight.  


Undue influence on government:

Which was fucking obvious.  

Godse portrayed Gandhi’s moral authority and fasts as coercion outside democracy. Gandhi held no office; his interventions were appeals to conscience in moments of breakdown, not instruments of state power.

Those appeals stopped once he was shot. A nuisance had been curbed.  

Long before January 30, 1948, Gandhi had faced a string of threats and failed attempts by Hindu extremists. A bomb was hurled at his motorcade in Pune on June 25, 1934 during his Harijan tour against untouchability; in May and September 1944 at Panchgani and Sevagram, Nathuram Godse himself was stopped while trying to attack Gandhi with a dagger and released when Gandhi refused to press charges.

If this is true, then the Police should have kept Godse under observation. They have a duty to prevent crime irrespective of the target of the crime. The big question is why Morarji Desai, when informed of the wider conspiracy of which Pahwa was part, refused to take any action. Maybe he was simply stupid. Equally odd is the fact that Godse was caught by an American.  

In June 1946, boulders placed on a rail track near Nerul – Karjat derailed the train carrying him; a bomb planted at a Bombay venue in September 1946 exploded prematurely; and on January 20, 1948 a grenade was thrown at Birla House to create confusion for an assassination attempt that failed.

Pahwa was arrested. He had previously made a confession to a Sociology Professor who informed Desai. Yet, no action was taken. Why?  

This record predates both Partition and the Pakistan payment controversy, undercutting claims that these were the motive. The earliest attack was clearly against Gandhi’s anti-untouchability campaign after the Poona Pact, suggesting their Opposition to Gandhi’s social reform agenda and hatred for the Dalits.

It was the suggestion Gandhi himself made. Nobody believed him. The Poona Pact was based on Rajah-Moonje pact- i.e. it was seen as a smart move by the Hindutvadis.  

Rather, the Hindutva hostility toward Muslims, Christians, and Communists – articulated by M. S. Golwalkar – can also be read as reflecting

their virulent attacks on Hinduism?  

a deeper hatred for the lower strata of Hindu society, which formed the bulk of these targeted groups.

Sadly, it is the lower strata of Hindu society which attacks Dalits.  

Gandhi might seem an odd target for a Hindu assassin.

Which is why people didn't believe there were any such attempts. People assumed it would be a crazy Muslim who would get rid of the Mahacrackpot.  

He proclaimed himself a sanatani Hindu, invoked Ram Rajya, drew on bhajans and epics, and for much of his life accepted varna and even caste as moral ideas. What Godse and the Hindutva camp opposed was not Gandhi’s religiosity but the political use he made of it; his vision of inclusivity.

i.e. everybody, including the Brits, should do what he told them to do- e.g. surrender to Hitler.  

Using Hindu idiom to argue for coexistence and caste reform, he undercut the project of Hindu consolidation.

No. His one good idea was that Congress-wallahs should spend time in jail. This built esprit de corps and was good for Hindu consolidation. On the other hand, when rioting occurred, his financiers stepped in to make sure Hindu gangsters killed plenty of Muslims. Gandhi was cool with that. He said that he personally knew which Bihari Congressmen had killed innocent Muslims. Did he demand their suspension from the Party? Nope. As he said to Viceroy Wavell, if India wanted a blood-bath, let it have a blood-bath. The soldier was shocked by the callousness of the civilian.  

It was antithetical to Godse’s worldview: Gandhi blocked the idea of India as a Hindu nation, humanised Muslims amid communal fury, and redefined Hindu virtue away from revenge and dominance.

No. Gandhian administrations after 1937 alienated Muslims who complained of school-children having to sing 'Vande Mataram' etc.  

He was dangerous not because he was insufficiently Hindu, but because his moral politics hollowed out the case for Hindu majoritarianism.

He was a nuisance. Godse is praised for having curbed it. But he too was a nuisance and was hanged.  


The attitude returns: From Gandhi to Gauri

Although moral censure curbed its open expression, Hindutva ideology did not disappear; it

was the basis of the Congress party. Nehru succeeded in 'Brahminizing' India by using 'Socialism' to clip the wings of the mercantile and productive classes.  

receded and endured. Its subdued existence is reflected in the permission for Godse to read out his long justification for his crime though Justice Khosla was inclined to bar it as irrelevant.

It relevant. The danger was that rumours would spread that the actual assassin was a Muslim close to Nehru or something of that sort. 

Over decades, this current moved from the margins toward state power,

Lohia & JP had brought the Jan Sangh into the mainstream in the Sixties. The RSS played a big role in bringing down Indira in 1977.  

culminating in 2014 with a former RSS pracharak becoming the prime minister.

Vajpayee became a pracharak in 1947. He became PM in '97-98. 

In the run-up to the 2014 elections, a high-octane campaign backed by the RSS was launched against the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA)

Rahul had refused to become PM. Moreover, he wouldn't let anybody else take that job. Thus, it was a case of 'Modi or nobody.' Sadly, that remains the case today.  

II government on patently false alibi but it succeeded.

I suppose Teltumbde means 'allegations (not alibis) of corruption were false.' But, they were irrelevant. Rahul should have become PM saying he would root out corruption. He'd have won a majority before fucking up and getting shot or blown up like Daddy and Granny.  

The defeat of the Congress at the polls appeared certain. From 2013 onward, a grim pattern re-emerged: public intellectuals

whom nobody had heard of 

marked, tracked, and shot at close range for what they wrote and said. Narendra Dabholkar was killed in Pune on August 20, 2013. His work against superstition and for scientific temper made him a target.

Of some nutter whom nobody has heard of.  

Govind Pansare was shot outside his home on February 16, 2015 after challenging sectarian readings of history and organising workers.

Sadly, Teltumbde wasn't shot because he was utterly useless.  

M. M. Kalburgi was murdered at his doorstep in Dharwad on August 30, 2015 for his critique of blind faith and Brahminical practices. Gauri Lankesh

was important because of the Lingayat/Veerashaiva controversy.  

was gunned down in Bengaluru on September 5, 2017 for her relentless journalism against hate politics. As the investigations revealed they were planned and executed by Hindutva outfits – Sanatan Sanstha

founded by a crazy hypnotherapist who had spent a couple of decades in the UK 

and the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti.

Which denounces films. It is harmless. 

These killings

didn't matter at all, save in that Lankesh was a Lingayat journalist with her own magazine.  

reflected the same animus that once marked Gandhi as an obstacle, now marking rationalists, scholars, and journalists who stand in the way of a Hindu Rashtra vision.

Teltumbde doesn't stand in the way of any vision. Nobody wants to kill him. Sad.  

Godse’s Deification

After 2014, Nathuram Godse – long confined to the margins of public memory – began to surface in ways that would have been unthinkable in earlier decades.

Why? The Mahacrackpot had made Nehru his heir. Indira had made Congress dynastic. So long as Gandhi parivar was willing to supply Prime Ministers (or Regents like Manmohan keeping the seat warm for Rahul), it made sense to say 'Gandhi was great'. But those days are gone. Currently, Modi is the only guy who can run the country. The Opposition don't have a candidate. Thus, precisely because nutters like Teltumbde say 'RSS killed Gandhi' we are obliged to say 'killing Gandhi was an act of great heroism.' The real problem, however, is that autocracy is curbed by assassination. Indian politicians don't want to get shot. Rahul knows that if he is PM, he will get blamed for some stupid shit and thus become a target for some group or the other. 

The shift did not come through official endorsement, but through a loosening of taboos in parts of the public sphere: fringe groups openly praising him, attempts to install his busts, small shrines dedicated in his name, and social media campaigns recasting him as a “patriot” rather than an assassin. What had earlier been whispered in closed circles started appearing in rallies, local commemorations, and online networks.

Why? Teltudmbe's answer is 'It is a Brahmin plot dating back thousands of years!'  

Elected representatives from the ruling ecosystem occasionally made statements praising Godse or calling him a nationalist, triggering controversy but also revealing how far the moral boundary had moved.

Moral boundaries don't matter. What matters is whether the Gandhi dynasty will appoint a technocrat to run things so that they don't get shot when GoI does stupid shit.  

Each episode followed a pattern – outrage, tactical distancing by party leadership, and then quiet return of the same sentiment in another form. The cumulative effect was to normalise public ambivalence toward Gandhi’s assassin in a way that steadily eroded the earlier national consensus that treated the act as a civilisational shame.

Ambedkarites did much to paint Gandhi as an evil bastard. Logically, they should praise Godse as their deliverer. Had Gandhi lived, would the Hindu Code Bills have been passed?

Digital media accelerated this rehabilitation. WhatsApp forwards, Facebook pages, and YouTube channels circulated selective readings of Godse’s courtroom statement, stripped of context, presenting it as heroic testimony.

It is better than this cretin's testimony.  

This cultural re-framing did not require state proclamation.

RSS was banned because of Gandhi's assassination. Yet it could grow so large as a Parliamentary party that it got Cabinet seats in some States by the end of the Sixties. From '77-to '79 if even had a Cabinet minister at the Centre. But the first BJP Chief Minister dates from around 1990. The killing of Rajiv Gandhi gave it the chance to gain power at the Centre. But once Rahul returned to India in 2002, Congress regained momentum. Thus 'cultural framing' doesn't matter. What matters is whether the owner of a dynastic party has a dog in the manger attitude. Rahul won't rule- because he doesn't want to get shot- but he also won't let any one else rule. This is the political 'framing' which decides outcomes. 

It flourished in an atmosphere where majoritarian assertion,

i.e. what happened in 1947 

grievance politics,

see above 

and hostility to dissent

see above. Ambedkar approved India's First Amendment which goes in the opposite direction to America's.  

had become mainstream. In that climate, the assassin of Mahatma Gandhi could be reimagined not as a warning from history but as an icon for the present.

It is obvious that a lot of people who joined the RSS in the Fifties, Sixties, Seventies etc. thought the Mahacrackpot was a nuisance. Thanks, first to Indira & Buta Singh and then to Rao & Manmohan, Gandhianism was kicked out of Indian politics long ago. Ambedkarite shite was given a shot in the arm by Mayawati. Let us see if she can make a comeback in the Hindi belt after delimitation. 

Millions of Godses Murdering India

What is alarming today is not an isolated act of violence but the gradual social production of a mindset in which hostility is moralised and prejudice is recast as patriotism.

This happened when Muslims were massacred or chased out of Delhi. Nehru was Prime Minister at that time.  

The outlook once identified with Nathuram Godse now circulates through a broad ecosystem of schooling, cultural work, and media messaging that presents India as exclusively Hindu, treats minorities with suspicion, and brands dissent as betrayal.

Custodian of Evacuee (later 'Enemy') Property treated Muslims with suspicion. They seized property because they 'anticipated' that the owner might migrate to Pakistan.  

This reproduction happens across channels. Institutions linked to the RSS, thousands of schools and hostels where cultural instruction shades into ideological orientation. Curricular revisions soften or omit difficult histories

stupid lies spread by Leftist Professors 

– Gandhi’s assassination context, caste oppression, communal violence

this nutter is pretending that Brahmins love Muslims and want to kill only Dalits. That may have been J.N Mandal's belief but he had to run away to India.  

– while elevating civilisational pride.

Indians should hate and be ashamed of Indian civilization.  

Social media sustains a flow of grievance narratives, misinformation, and selective hero-making;

e.g. Ambedkar worship 

parts of broadcast media echo majoritarian frames and stigmatize critics as “anti-national.”

This works if the shoe fits. It doesn't work- as with Owaisi- if it doesn't fit at all.  

Even fringe attempts to memorialise Godse, though not mainstream, signal how far the moral threshold has shifted.

The 'moral threshold' for this nutter shifted when he started to tell stupid, paranoid, lies.  If was genuinely smart, he'd be an IT billionaire. 

Gandhi’s murder cannot be viewed merely as an event of the past. It marked the beginning of an ongoing project.

To make India strong and prosperous. That's what this nutter objects to.  

January 30, 1948 was not an end; it was the first shot in a long war against pluralism,

which succeeded at Partition. The word 'pluralism' was coined for Burma which had already split off from India.  

secularism,

i.e. saying Hinduism is evil. Taliban is very nice.  

and constitutional democracy in India.

Dynasticism. Why is a low-born chai-wallah sitting in the office which used to belong to Cambridge alumni like Nehru, Indira & Rajiv? Incidentally, Rahul has an MPhil from Cambridge. Also, he is a janeodhari Brahmin.  

The forces that killed Gandhi are today in power. They are no longer rebels

There were Communist rebels. There were no Hindu rebels in independent India because the country was ruled by Hindus.  

but the rulers of the state. The danger, therefore, has multiplied many times over.

In which case, Muslims should be fleeing.  

Every attack on minorities, every killing in the name of cow protection,

e.g. the cow protection riots in Bihar in 1917? Gandhi was sent to Champaran to distract attention from it.  

every hate speech,

so long as only Hinduism is attacked 

every communal riot, every attempt to erase composite culture – these are all part of the same project that killed Gandhi.

& which succeeded thanks, in some part, to him. Going to jail together created esprit corps. Gandhi's son married Rajaji's daughter- thus breaking caste taboos. More remarkably, when Nehru's sister married a Muslim, it was Gandhi who broke up the marriage and got her a suitable Brahmin groom.  

The incidents may appear separate, but the ideology behind them is coherent.

It is the Indian national ideology. If the majority won't fight for India, the minorities are equally doomed.  

Millions of Godses are at work to destroy India in body and spirit.

In which case the country should be getting poorer and weaker. Yet, under Modi, the opposite has been the case.  

Bodily India is being disfigured by their regime through silence over or the lies about the effective loss of control on vast lands along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh at Galwan, Depsang and Hot Springs.

More was lost under Nehru. But then, had Gandhi prevailed, the whole country would have been lost to the Japs in '42.  

Simultaneously, India is being devastated daily by flattening of hills, ecological damage, diversion of forest lands, devastation of environment and destruction of rivers through policies that favour big capital.

Big Capital has the money to finance the State. This cretin thinks India should emulate Venezuela.  

All facilitations for rich and wealthy at the cost of the people are being sold as development and people are being intoxicated with religion and silenced with free rations and occasional freebees.

Rich and wealthy foreigners finance the Wire and publicize this cretin's worthless books.  

India is being killed in spirit through systematic destruction of her history, disfiguration of its archaeology, culture, and trampling upon all the values embodied in the Constitution.

Also, Modi is incessantly sodomizing Dalits like Teltumde. He is too traumatized to talk about it but we should do so for him.  

In this, we must acknowledge our own responsibility.

Teltumbde should not tried to suck Modi off. That randy bugger went ass-to-mouth on him. Dr. Ambedkar must be turning in his grave.  

By remaining silent,

because Modi has shoved his dick in your mouth 

by treating all this as ‘normal,’

It isn't normal for the Prime Minister of a big country to sodomize an elderly shithead every day.  

and by viewing each incident in isolation, we too have become complicit with Godses’ projects.

Fuck Godse's projects. It is Modi's project of going ass-to-mouth on every elderly Dalit which should worry us. By not speaking out against this atrocity, the editors of 'the Wire' are complicit in Teltumbe's brains having been buggered to buggery. Omidyar Sahib should kindly take action.  

Sunday, 1 February 2026

G.A Cohen's cretinism

G.A Cohen wites

A person is exploited when unfair advantage is taken of him,

That is true enough. However, without unfairness, per se, an unanticipated or unjustified onerousness of obligation may be resented as exploitative even if it does not benefit the other party.

and he suffers from (bad) brute luck when his bad luck is not the result of a gamble or risk which he could have avoided.

This does not follow. If a person is befuddled by drink and ends up being taken advantage of, he may well resent having been exploited. More importantly, if a person who can beat or kill you or ruin your career harbours such a feeling, it is in your interest to compensate the person so thoroughly that he is appeased. 

I believe that the primary egalitarian impulse is to extinguish the influence on distribution of both exploitation and brute luck.

Exploitation is like unconscionability and thus is justiciable or can be brought under the scope of a tribunal of some sort. Insurance schemes are the remedy for bad luck. The primary egalitarian impulse is to rant and rave. It isn't to do anything sensible. 

To be sure, principled non- and antiegalitarians

are useless and stupid as Cohen 

also condemn (what they consider to be) exploitation,

This causes Exploitation to cry and cry and run home to its Mummy. 

but they do not have the same view of exploitation as egalitarians have, partly because they are less disturbed by brute-luck-derived asset differences which skew distributive outcomes.

Exploitation, as I have frequently explained, arises because Viceroy Sahib is surreptitiously entering the hovels of the poor and draining them of their precious bodily essence through aggravated acts of fellatio and cunnilingus. This is the true cause of poverty and inequality.  

On the foregoing sketch of the primary egalitarian impulse,

which I have far more elegantly expressed 

a statement which purports to express and assert it is exposed to two kinds of challenge. First, such a statement might be criticized for misidentifying what should, in the light of the fundamental egalitarian aim, be equalized.

Dignity? Abolish the distinction between Professor and Student. Given anybody who wants a PhD as many of them as they like.  

I shall myself so criticize Dworkin's equality of resources proposal, since I think that (among other things) it penalizes people who have tastes for which they cannot be held responsible but which, unluckily for them, cost a lot to satisfy.

Which is why other people must be held responsible for supplying those tastes.  

But one might also reject equality of resources on the quite different ground that it conflicts with some important nonegalitarian values.

Like not having your head kicked in by people you hold responsible for supplying your expensive tastes.  

One might say, for example, that while it is indeed brute luck which distributes children into rich and poor families, it would be wrong to seek rectification of the results of that luck, since

you would get your head kicked in. On the other hand, you are welcome to chop off the legs of tall people so they attain height equality with the short. 

that would undermine the institution of the family. In this article I shall not discuss problems for egalitarian proposals of that second kind, problems, that is, of trade-off between equality and other values. That is because I shall treat the various egalitarian proposals to be reviewed below as weak equalisandum claims. An equalisandum claim specifies that which ought to be equalized, what, that is, people should be rendered equal in.

This is the claim made by the vendor of a good or service. Everybody who paid for the thing, got the same thing. If a mistake was made, the vendor apologizes and makes reparations. 

There may be vendors, or potential vendors willing to meet any given equalisandum demand. The question is how much will they charge or, in economic terms- the opportunity cost- i.e. the best alternative foregone. 

Cohen, of course, isn't interested in equalising anything. That's the sort of thing the market, or a  bureaucracy, can do well enough. He is only interested in making stupid demands. Still, he got paid a little money to do so. Why grudge him that? 

An unqualified or strong equalisandum claim, which is the sort that an uncompromising egalitarian asserts, says that people should be as equal as possible in the dimension it specifies.

Thus, McDonalds will sell me the same 'Happy Meal' at the same price as it charges other customers. True, it make me happier than someone else but that is 'consumer surplus'. Marx considered 'profit' to be 'producer surplus'. By the Morishima fundamental theorem of Marxism, if even one enterprise makes a profit, exploitation exists. The Feminist version is that even if one man has a dick, then, because dicks may well enter vaginas, women are being exploited. 

A qualified or weak equalisandum claim says that they should be as equal as possible in some dimension but subject to whatever limitations need to be imposed in deference to other values: those limitations are not specified by the claim in question.

This is mere puffery. McDonalds may say 'we hope all our customers will experience as much joy as possible while eating their Happy Meal.  Sadly, we understand that some of our customers may be dealing with bereavement or other tragic outcomes and thus we cannot guarantee that all customers will experience an equal degree of joy from their Happy Meal. However, we assure you that everybody- rich or poor- will receive exactly the same item. Enjoy!' 

Now, strong equalisandum claims face objections of the two kinds distinguished above, and which I shall now call egalitarian and nonegalitarian objections.

I suppose, some people say they got fewer fries than others in their Happy Meal. That is an egalitarian objection or claim to reparation. The nonegalitarian objection would be that a beejay should be provided to me by a Super-Model while I eat my Happy Meal because I've got a really tiny dick and so the Universe owes me big time. 

An egalitarian objection rests on a view about the right way to treat people equally which differs from the one embodied in the strong equalisandum claim it challenges.

For example, I might demand McDonalds make a Happy Meal for people who want Indian, not American style, fast food. If there are enough Indians in the area, perhaps they will consider doing so. However, it is likely that some other vendor would have already cornered that market. My point is, the market takes care of this objection by itself.

What matters is if there is an incentive to supply whatever is being demanded. If demand is effective- i.e. backed up by money- it will be provided though the quality may be low or non-existent. The fact is you can easily buy a 'Philosopher's Stone' or 'flying unicorn' quite cheaply. Sadly, they are more than a bit shit. But this is also true of places which market themselves as egalitarian utopias.

The egalitarian objector thinks that people should be equal, to some or other extent, in something other than what the claim he opposes specifies, but he does not, qua egalitarian objector, object to the strength of that claim as such.

e.g. McDonalds should supply Samosas as well as Burgers because of the large Indian population in this region.  

By contrast, a nonegalitarian objection to a strong equalisandum claim says that, while the claim might (and might not) correctly identify what should be equalized, it wrongly fails to defer to nonegalitarian values which restrict the extent to which the form of equality it proposes should be pursued: because of those values, so the objection says, the equalisandum proposal is unacceptable (at least) in its strong form.

Gibberish. Strong egalitarianism is everybody getting the same Happy Meal. There is another dimension- e.g. the issue of whether the Indian Samosa is equal to the Burger- which is being invoked by weak as piss palaver. Thus a guy who complains that McDonalds is inegalitarian because it privileges the food of the White Man over the cuisine of the benighted darkie whose ancestors were raped, sodomized and subjected to incessant fellatio and cunnilingus by aristocratic Viceroys. 

An egalitarian objection to a strong equalisandum claim also applies to the weak one correlative to it, whereas a nonegalitarian objection challenges strong proposals only.

Egalitarianism is welcome to have as many dimensions as it pleases. A strong equilisandum objection would point to material evidence that such and such person got less of such and such good or service than other people. A weak one would just waffle on about how there is some other dimension which is being neglected- e.g. why is McDonald's not chopping off the penises of all customers? Don't they understand that no meal can be 'happy' if there is even one penis prowling around which might end up in a vagina?  

Since mine will be a weak proposal,

because Cohen has shit for brains and isn't really interested in equality at all.  

objections of a nonegalitarian kind will not detain me. Taking welfare as a sample equalisandum proposal,

If it is 'strong' then there is a multidimensional configuration space in which it has a representation. This means that any deviation from the prescribed outcome vector for a particular individual, then there is a valid claim of inequality. 

I shall presently illustrate

your own idiocy 

the distinction I have tried to draw by describing supposed objections to the welfare equalisandum which are (a) plainly not egalitarian, (b) arguably, and so I believe, egalitarian, and (c) problematic with respect to how they should be classified. But, before embarking on that exercise in differentiation, a word about what I shall mean by 'welfare' here, and throughout this study. Of the many readings of 'welfare' alive (if not well) in economics and philosophy, I am interested in two: welfare as enjoyment, or, more broadly, as a desirable or agreeable state of consciousness,

which is a matter of psychology, not economics. It may be not just multiply but infinitely realizable. There may be a 'moksha' pill or technique. But whereas a commodity space has a mathematical representation as a multi-dimensional space, 'Enjoyment' or 'agreeable states of consciousness' do not. 

What I mean is this. If I define 'Happy Meal' as a burger of a certain size plus x number of French Fries, then claims about getting an unequal portion can be usefully made. Otherwise, all we have is worthless jibber jabber about the true meaning of Happiness and how anybody can be called happy so long as even one penis is prowling around.  

which I shall call hedonic welfare; and welfare as preference satisfaction, where preferences order states of the world, and where a person's preference is satisfied if a state of the world that he prefers obtains, whether or not he knows that it does

which is why we can argue that the bloke is not happy with his happy meal because his own penis has not been cut off. What if it crams itself up his own arsehole? I tell you penises cause RAPE! They must be banned immediately!  

and, a fortiori, whatever hedonic welfare he does or does not get as a result of its obtaining.

Very true. You may think you aren't getting hedonic welfare from your dick being cut off but, a fortiori, you don't at all. No one can be truly happy till not even a single solitary dick can prowl around imperilling vaginas. 

Egalitarianism may or may not be desirable. However, market or bureaucratic or other protocol bound allocation systems have no difficulty with a strong equalisandum because they benefit by seeking to equalize outcomes- e.g. ensuring the Happy Meal each customer receives is the same. 

Cohen doesn't get this. 

a) Many people think that a policy of equalizing welfare is inconsistent with the maintenance of family values, because, so they say, those values endorse practices of benefiting loved ones which generate welfare inequalities.

But you can still equalize outcomes in the commodity space. Some aspects of welfare- e.g. having a nice Mummy or being pretty- aren't commodities. Yet. Further scientific progress and higher economic productivity may increasingly make them so.  

Now, however penetrating that point may be, it does not represent an egalitarian objection to equality of welfare.

It could do. Maybe there is trade off between increasing equality in the commodity space today but decreasing it in the wider 'welfare' space later on. If we let the Elon Musks of the world control more resources, maybe they will make amazing discoveries such that non-commodity aspects of welfare become more equal. In affluent countries, maybe this is what the vast majority want. They seem to have lost the taste for redistribution by the end of the Sixties. 

One caveat which Cohen & Co ignore is that 'disutility'- which cashes out as opportunity cost- is a sort of 'negative' Welfare. Once that is factored in, egalitarianism is just a Utilitarianism where market-makers enable Hicks-Kaldor improvements- i.e. the world wags on as before. 

Unregulated kinship generosity may be precious on other grounds, but it could not be thought to promote the result that people get an equal amount of something that they should have equal amounts of.

Very true. We should have equal amounts of health and beauty and wit and intelligence. It's unfair that my sister has more of these things that I do. That's why I hate my parents.  

Accordingly, if the family values objection indeed has force against equality of welfare, it is a reason for restricting the writ of that particular equalisandum, or form of equality, and not a reason for proposing another equalisandum in its stead.

Also if any one objects to my shitting on them, then we should restrict the writ of the 'equalisandum' whereby people who haven't shat on me feel it is unfair for me to shit on them.  

Family values do not challenge equality of welfare when the latter is construed as a qualified equalisandum proposal.

Only in the sense that you are wrong to object to my shitting on you.  

Another objection to unqualified equality of welfare

there is only one. Welfare can't be objectively measured 

which is not egalitarian is that implementing it would involve intolerably intrusive state surveillance.

surveillance is useless in such cases 

("Hi! I'm from the Ministry of Equality. Are you, by any chance, unusually happy today?")

Say you are miserable. They may give you some money.  

Gathering the information needed to apply unqualified equality of resources

is impossible. It is only with hindsight that we discover what was or wasn't a resource.  

might well involve less intrusion, and that would be a reason for preferring unqualified equality of resources to unqualified equality of welfare, but not one which impugned the egalitarian character of equality of welfare.

What impugns Cohen's shite is the fact that it involves things which can't be measured and thus partial ordering is impossible.  



Saturday, 31 January 2026

Wittgenstein's error

We read in Wittgenstein's Tractatus that “what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence”.

This is obviously false. What can be said can also be said very obliquely or in a confused or garbled manner. Drink enough Whiskey and you will see this for yourself. Is the reverse equally true? I think so. It is merely a matter of skill. At any rate, we can't prove otherwise. The fact is, we frequently find a phrase or idiom- sometimes in another language, sometimes amongst the less educated class of our own people- which perfectly expresses something inchoate which we had previously struggled to express. 

As for what cannot be talked about- e.g. being homosexual at a time when male homosexuals were pitilessly prosecuted- the truth is an artful, elegant, superbly witty, discourse develops around it such that everything can be expressed without anything be said. Indeed, some older British homosexuals felt that de-criminalisation of sodomy killed off an exquisite idiolect- 'Polari'- which had added colour and spice to the drab world of post-war reconstruction. 

Can anything said in 'natural language' be recast in terms of propositional calculus? For any particular purpose, yes- it can be done well enough. It is merely a question of 'restricted comprehension' or giving well-defined extensions to intensions. 

In 1939, the University of Cambridge offered two courses on the “Foundations of Mathematics” — one taught by Alan Turing, the other by Ludwig Wittgenstein. Both were wrongheaded. Math has no foundations. It is useful and burgeons where people are motivated by utility rather than the desire to shit higher than their arseholes. Still, computer checking of proofs- or indeed computer generated proofs- are useful for Math and so Turing & Gentzen were on the right track. Brouwer too was useful. With Voevodsky you had 'univalent foundations'. With Wiltless you had vacuity.