Indians who have managed to escape India and to settle in the West like flaunting their higher status- which affects their, or their children's, marriage prospects and life chances- so as to humiliate and exert hegemony over Indians still stuck in India. This trait passes over to the Second Generation, but only if they are employed in Higher Education teaching worthless shite- in which case they are looked down on by both Westerners and dark skinned immigrants to the West who are making way more money or simply aren't as stupid and ignorant.
One reason for this is that darkies from shithole countries gain 'intellectual affirmative action' in the Western Academy. They are then employed to award homeopathic doses of Paideia, but attested to by inflated Credentials, to cretinous victims of epistemic self-abuse. Suppose you don't fall into this capacious category. You can't complain that your Professor is shit and can't speak proper English because that makes you a Racist. Anyway, you are a cretin, otherwise you would not be studying shite under a shite Professor in a shite University.
India should be proud that it exports shite Professors of shite subjects. Expelling shit is a good thing- though only assholes do it. India should be ashamed it did not export all its shite Professors. One result is that it must continue to shit out shite Professors upon crap Departments of Western Universities.
As a case in point, consider the following article in Scroll.in, by Ramya Vijaya, a Professor of Economics at Stockton University & Bidisha Biswas, a Professor of Political Science at Western Washington University.In her new book, Caste, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson looks towards the Indian caste system to understand the stubborn persistence of racism in the US.
Wilkerson is being silly. America had a one drop rule. Thus it does not have the Mexican or other Latin American or Portuguese type caste system. Moreover, America does not have arranged marriage and an endogamous 'jati/biradari' solution to the 'stable marriage problem'. However, in India, Creed trumps Caste when it comes to endogamy. Indeed, Religion is powerful enough to redraw territorial boundaries. Caste is relatively innocuous.
Ackerloff, in his Nobel acceptance speech, said his study of Indian caste gave him the idea for 'efficiency wages'. An economist should have an economic theory of caste. Vijaya has a shite theory of caste. This is because she is not an economist. She is a cretin regurgitating cretinous availability cascades for cretinous students.
In a similar vein Indians, particularly in the diaspora, can look towards the recent soul searching over white racial privilege in the US in the wake the Black Lives Matter protests, to reflect on how caste-based segregation endures.
Very true! Patel policemen routinely gun down Sharmas on the streets. Vijaya herself insisted on being mentioned before Biswas because she is of higher caste not because Economists are superior to Political Scientists.
The recent caste discrimination lawsuit launched against Cisco by the State of California has generated defensiveness among some in the Indian immigrant community with declarations of caste being a thing of the past and no longer a relevant influence on diasporic life.
Whereas the truth is that Patels on the police-force shoot Sharmas any chance they get.
In our book Seeing White: An Introduction to White Privilege, we
we? Only Vijaya was co-author- along with two white ladies who whimpered in awe at their sublime privilege in getting to write a book with a honest to goodness darkie- that too one with an unpronounceable name. They give the following example of their thesis-
explored the seeming invisibility of whiteness; white Americans are not conscious of being white,
In the example quoted above, the 'white' lady was not actually being 'white'. She was being 'American'. An African American woman might have said the same thing.
they perceive themselves and their experiences as the good, normal way of being.
Clearly these guys have never heard the expression 'Free, White, and Twenty One'. Nor have they heard of 'hyphenated-Americans' or 'White Trash' or 'Boston Brahmins'. They don't get that social stratification exists in every country. One reason people go to University is so as to alter the way they see themselves, they see the world, and the world sees them.
Americans are conscious of where they fit into the social and racial hierarchy. Why? They are human beings. But some animal species too have an awareness of a 'pecking order'. The thing is not 'invisible' at all. Economists know that it is statistically testable. Political Scientists are aware that race, class, gender, education, age, etc. play a part in self-perceived identity.
Religion plays a big part in the life of many Americans. They consider the 'good and normal' life to be the one held up as normative by their Religious Sect. That is why some homosexuals, instead of thinking of themselves as 'good and normal', pay money for 'conversion therapy'.
Why are these two cretins arguing otherwise? Is it because they are cognitive coolies, epistemic untouchables, who escaped from a shithole country? Or is it because they are just as shit as other shite academics in shit University Departments?
At the same time, they are hyper aware of other races and the ways in which people are not “white”.
The problem here is that Whites may beat up a White homosexual while idolizing a virile, heterosexual, African American sports star.
Identity in an advanced Capitalist country is a complicated matter because the economic consequences of Identity are complicated. A white woman who 'passed' as a Professor of African American Studies may face worse consequences than an elderly 'one drop' Black Professor of Classics who, as in Phillip Roth's novel, is accused of being a Racist for using the word 'spooks'.
In much the same way, upper caste experiences in the Indian diaspora are often thought of as the normal or good Indian immigrant success story.
Whereas ending up giving blowjobs at truck stops in between spells of incarceration is often thought of as abnormal and bad- more particularly if your name is Amartya Sen and you have tenure at Harvard.
Why are people employed to empty bed-pans not considered to be role models whereas cardiac surgeons are celebrated? The answer is that surgeons get paid a lot of money. They have to invest heavily in education. They must remain relatively sober or risk a ruinous malpractice suit.
In a 2019 New York Times profile, Indira Nooyi the former chief executive of PepsiCo, a first- generation Indian immigrant often heralded for being one of the few high-profile female CEOs in the US, volunteered her caste identity. Her family, she mentioned “was a good, conservative Brahmin family, deeply steeped in learning and education. That was the only focus. The expectation was you would get, at a minimum, a master’s degree.”
Brahmin and Pariah are two words which have entered the English language. Brahmin has the connotation of being learned, sober, and high class. Nooyi, quite correctly, adverts to her family's high standing in these respects. She is saying, 'I am successful because my family was God fearing, Sober, Industrious and had a great veneration for Higher Education'. Another woman might have said 'my success is due to my Quaker background', or else 'my ancestors were Rabbis', or 'my parents attended Howard, like their parents before them'. It is right and proper to pay condign tribute to one's family if that is what helped you to rise. Nooyi, who went to my old school in T.Nagar, knows that Tamil Nadu has risen up because people of all castes and creeds have engaged in 'Tardean mimetics'. They have imitated those who invested in education for their kids. Sir Theagaraya Chetty, after whom T.Nagar is named, made it clear that non-Brahmins wanted to come up the same way as Brahmins. They had no hatred of them. This was further clarified by the A.D.M.K which ended up being led by a female Brahmin who was Chief Minister till she died recently.
In openly proclaiming her upper caste identity,
She told the truth. But nobody in their right mind would think she got ahead in America because Americans reverence Tamil Brahmins. In other words, she- like her sister, Grammy nominee, Chandrika Tandon,- rose by merit. But that merit had a hereditary component.
These two shitheads have no merit. They tell lies.
she portrayed Brahminism in the same romanticised manner that some white Americans reminisce about the genteel, elegant and old-world charm of southern plantation life.
This is a stupid lie. Americans have a concept of 'Boston Brahmins', but Bostonians didn't own slaves. They were more likely to be Abolitionists.
Suppose Indra Nooyi had risen because of her beauty and her charm. As a young debutante she married the heir to the Pepsi Cola fortune. Then her husband died and the CEO was incompetent and J.R Ewing tried to takeover Pepsi using underhand means. Indra is forced to take a seat upon the board. Using her feminine charms she wins over the head of the SEC who blocks Ewing's bid. Then Indra meets the Soviet leader at the White House. He becomes infatuated with her. She gets the sole right to sell Cola all over the vast territories of the Soviet Union. Then some Islamic terrorists kidnap her but she sings Dixie and tears come to their eyes and they find Christ and they release her.
Suppose all this was the case, then these two cretins would not be stupid, cretinous, liars.
But the gentility of an old southern plantation lifestyle of course rested on the horrific extraction of wealth and profits from the slave labour of African Americans.
And the gentility of these two shitheads rests, of course, on the genocide and slavery which permitted the Universities where they teach to get the money to function.
Now these worthless gobshites are pretending to be 'woke' and are hoping to jump on a bandwagon that is the exclusive property of African Americans and the First Nations.
Nostalgia for the elegance of plantation owners not only represents an erasure of the brutality of slavery but also perpetuates a myth of refinement of white in contrast to the supposed lack of refinement of the non-white who were denied access to the means of refinement.
These cunts are using the fact that they managed to escape India to rub the noses of those still stuck in that shithole in the type of shite Scroll publishes for the foredoomed project of their upliftment to a level of equal stupidity.
In the same way, the proclivity towards education is reflective of the Brahmin privilege of access to education,
But Tamil Brahmins had restricted access to higher education, especially in Medicine, which is why they turned to the private sector and emigrated in great numbers.
a basic right that was explicitly forbidden to those belonging to the Dalit strata for several centuries.
But most Brahmins were illiterate! By contrast, some hereditary 'writer' and 'Doctor' castes were ritually low caste- or even Dalit- though they tended to rise in public esteem. Anyway, the education available at that time was as shite as the education these gobshite purvey.
As a result, Brahmin households like Nooyi’s
of Sir Chetty's or, indeed, Dalit icons like M.C Raja's
often have access to long legacies of educated family members and extended networks that Dalit households with their much more recent access to education have never had the opportunity to build.
Some have. Most haven't. Tardean mimetics within endogamous sub-caste can cause rapid changes. The fact that the traditional occupation of Tamil Brahmins would not save them from starvation caused Tardean mimetics to operate in a counter-intuitive way. They embraced a Western Education which essentially said that everything they believed was shit. So they shifted the goal posts to the abstract fields of Mathematical Physics and Game theoretic Biology.
In perpetuating the myth of a good Brahmin tradition of education,
So these two shitheads agree that there was no 'Brahmin tradition of education'. Them guys were ignorant and stupid. To pretend otherwise is to perpetuate a myth.
Nooyi follows the same pattern of erasure and myth making of cultural superiority as southern whiteness.
No. She told the truth. These two cunts are telling stupid lies. But then they are useless wankers teaching worthless subjects. Nooyi did a proper job and she did it well. That is why we are interested in her but not interested in the crap these two cunts are flinging in our face.
The Cisco case rests on this very same reflexive elevation of Brahmin access to educational networks.
But what about another case, also certified by the California Dept. on Employment and Housing discrimination, in which a 'Kappu Naidu' alleged that a 'Kamma Naidu' had harassed him on the basis of Caste?
The Cisco case rests on the assertion that Dalits are darker in color and belong to a different race. But there are differences of color within sub-castes. A Reddy can sue another Reddy. In the UK a Pakistani Muslim Arain sued another Arain whom he alleged was a higher caste 'Chowdhury'. These two gobshites can be sued by any of their sub-continental students on the grounds of caste discrimination even if both belong to the lowest caste. Why? US law does not distinguish between which Race or Gender is supposed to be superior. A wealthy white man being boycotted by African American female janitorial staff can sue the Company and get big damages. Meanwhile very poor people working under horrible conditions get no help. Why? The Employer has deep pockets. The Government has shite lawyers.
An Indian origin Dalit Cisco engineer complained about being denied professional opportunities by his Brahmin managers who became aware of his Dalit status.
Became aware? They knew each other from College.
The managers’ bias, it seems, stemmed from the engineer’s admission to a prestigious engineering college in India on the basis of caste-based affirmative action rather than the caste-based Brahmin privilege of access to education.
This is the allegation of the complainant who certainly does have a private remedy against the Employer. The question is whether racial discrimination occurred. If the Court finds it has occurred, then any person from the sub-continent can sue his Employer any time he likes. Why? It would be easy to show that he is the only person who belongs to a particular sub-caste who is employed in that organization. Suppose I am one of 5 Vivek Iyers employed by Cisco. I am sacked for being drunk and not knowing shit about Computers. I sue. The other Iyers belong to different sub-sub-castes. I alone belong to the Viskey Venum Vadadesi Vadama subcaste.
Nooyi or the Cisco managers are not alone; Indians in the diaspora often exhibit casual and unthinking pride in the ritualistic traditions of their upper castes families like thread ceremonies and certain dress codes, without a corresponding recognition of the exclusion and oppression it represents.
It is right and proper to take pride in one's own culture, family and religious traditions. Would these cunts dare to point a finger at Muslims for exhibiting 'casual and unthinking pride' in their traditions? How about orthodox Jews? What about Evangelical Christians- many of whom are African American? Is it not a fact that sober and religious people exclude drunken bums from entering their places of worship so as to provide blow-jobs in return for the price of a sandwich? Is it not oppressive to get the police to arrest nutters who turn up in the Church or the Mosque or the Synagogue to shout 'Hail Satan!'?
A growing recognition of the ongoing harm of such selective nostalgia has prompted a re-evaluation of the popular plantation wedding industry in the US that used to promote southern slave plantation houses as romantic sites for wedding celebrations in the genteel southern tradition.
There has also been a growing recognition that if you get a shit degree, taught by worthless gobshites, from shit Universities, then you are going to have a shitty life. You can blame this on 'genteel southern traditions' but only if you have large quantities of shit lodged where your brain should be.
Hollywood star Ryan Reynolds recently apologised for having had such a plantation wedding. Similarly, the Indian upper caste diaspora,
should apologize for not saying 'Some American University Departments are completely shit. The Indians they hire have shit for brains. If you want to be successful, don't waste your money and time studying there. Do something useful with your life.'
particularly those in positions of power like Nooyi,
she now works in the non-profit sector. She must back vocational training rather than 4 year degrees for the great mass of Americans. She must denounce these cretins.
must reflect on the harm their selective and unthinking memorialisation of upper caste family traditions of privilege cause those without the caste access.
These cretins are wrong. Nooyi should tell the truth about how she rose. It is a fact that families like hers- or like that of Kamala Harris's Mom- interpreted the Hindu religion in a certain way such that academic success in STEM subjects was seen as spiritually and morally worthwhile. This meant Tardean mimetics with epistemically superior targets. However, sobriety, discipline, sacrifice, were also required. Talking worthless shite helps nobody. It damages your brain.
Reynold’s apology for a plantation wedding
should provide a model for these two shitheads own apology for joining an utterly useless profession which actively damages the life-chances of those upon whom it preys.
is part of recent a wave of high-profile awakening on the cultural glorification of symbols of segregation in the US. Popular music bands like Dixie Chics and Lady Antebellum have recently accepted their unthinking complicity in elevating narratives of superiority by using words like “Dixie” and “Antebellum” that are related to a sense of pride in a pre-emancipation South. A similar history of names relates to the Indian caste system.
Which, however, is not related to slavery. The fact is ex-slaves- like the Harris family- have the surnames of the owners, who were often also progenitors, of their ancestors.
Upper caste Hindus often use surnames that are caste names.
The reverse is the case. Sub-castes adopt occupational or other honorific names. Iyer, Patel, Singh, Choudhry, Thakur, Gupta etc are not specific enough to pick out a particular endogamous community. The truly privileged have territorial names. But this was also true of the European aristocracy.
The early 20th century Dravidian movement in Southern India led by anti-caste reformers like E Ve Ramaswamy (Periyar) actively campaigned against this practice as a way to create space for individual identity and self-respect as opposed to identities based on caste power. As a result, the use of caste names like Iyer and Iyengar receded for a time among the Tamil community in India. Yet the practice is common now particularly among diaspora Indians.
Why? Because it was administratively convenient if you had settled in Bombay or elsewhere. As an honorific 'aya' was added to one's name anyway. Our practice is to use the father's name as an initial, unless one is very posh in which case there is territorial component as well, while your given name stands in the place of surname. The Justice Party and Periyar and so on wanted to get rid of the feudal system as adapted by the Colonialists.
At one time my Dad thought we should change our surname once back in India. Then he saw there was no need. Nobody cares about such things anymore.
In testimonies collected by the Ambedkar King Study Circle California, several Dalit immigrants mention discomfort with frequent probing of names among Indian community groups and colleagues in order to discern caste identity.
This is quite true. But, I notice, high caste people hate it when I do the same thing to them- more particularly if they are related to me. This is because much of my information about Indian castes is derived from American academics. Thus I say 'Joseph Campbell says that Iyers chop off the heads of their sons when visiting their Kuladevam shrine'. The kids naturally start howling. I say 'don't worry. Your parents are all acharabrashta. You stand in no danger'. The parents say- 'Vivek, we don't chop off the head of our sons. We just shave their hair as an offering to the Deity. You too underwent this ceremony. Why are you trying to scare our kids just when we have booked our holiday in Chennai?'
Caste is an uncomfortable business. Few of us keep up all the old rituals and customs.
Similar to the rethink over words like Dixie and Antebellum, those with upper caste Indian heritage must reflect on the culture of names that evoke caste dominance.
Why stop there? Why not just adopt American names? Embrace Christianity. Identify as a Cherokee.
In her comparison of white racial privilege to caste privilege Wilkerson mentions that while attending academic conferences on caste in the US, she began to recognise South Asians from dominant castes by the way they seemed to have a “certitude of being,” a confidence about their place in life. It is this certitude that Indira Nooyi exhibited when she prefaced her comments about her family by saying “we never lacked for anything, but we didn’t have much.”
Having 'certitude of being' is a good thing. Be confident. Show pride in your family. If you look nervous and try to hide facts about your family, people will jump to the conclusion that you make your money giving b.js at truck-stops. Your parents were jail-birds. Your kids are in care.
In openly proclaiming both her Brahminical identity as well as her lack of class privilege Nooyi and many successful upper caste Indians signal a story of individual achievement where caste privilege either no longer exists or is rapidly fading.
No. Nooyi is saying Brahmins are superior to most Americans. She was able to rise higher than natives because of something special about her background. Her people were not materialistic. They were not greedy. But they were achievement oriented.
Why did Nooyi say this? The answer is because it was in her interest to do so. Stakeholders would say to themselves 'this lady is unlikely to embezzle money or sexually harass all and sundry. Her family tradition is to pursue virtue and excellence. True, she comes from a shithole country. But she is one of a small minority of smart and virtuous people in that shithole country. Once people like her get to America, they can rise on the basis of merit.'
What would a Dalit entrepreneur say? 'I come from an Ambedkarite family. Let me tell you about Dr. Ambedkar. He got a scholarship from an Indian Prince to Columbia. Instead of just getting a degree, he got a PhD in fiscal policy. His dissertation was so good, the British Parliament relied on it. He also got a PhD in monetary policy from the LSE. He simultaneously qualified as a barrister. This was back in 1920 when you could count the number of Black people with a Doctorate on the fingers of one hand! Ambedkar joined the Viceroy's Council at a young age. He helped draft the Indian Constitution. Since then two members of my caste have become President of India purely on the basis of intellectual merit and integrity of character. Since most of us are engaged in grass-roots reform, few of us are represented in the higher ranks of private enterprise. But this is a profit opportunity for Corporations! Make a point of hiring Dalits. They will rise by merit, not use intrigue based on a sense of entitlement'.
What do these two shitheads say? Be ashamed of who you are. Only Whiteness matters in America. Be invisible. Change your name. If people think you don't look White start talking about Ryan Reynolds and his plantation wedding. Try to pass as African American.
The trouble with this strategy is that white women who were discovered to be 'passing' for Black were mocked and derided. That is why honesty is the best policy. But, always put your best foot forward. If you are confident and proud of your family, people will have confidence in you. They will respect your family.
Yet the same open declaration of lower class origins would not be possible for someone from a Dalit background without a fear of their achievements being diminished as the outcome of undeserving affirmative action as seems to have been the experience in the Cisco case.
These cretins are wrong. The reason the Dalit man complained is because he knew he was as good or better than his bosses. He has advertised this for the world to see. How we can help the good cause is by saying that all graduates of IIT have to pass the same exams. They are equal in merit though there is a provision for disadvantaged students to get remedial classes so as to catch up.
Concluding her exploration of caste and race, Wilkerson mentions that racial privilege will continue to persist unless every one examines the ways they feed into the structure of white dominance in small and large ways through everyday actions.
Wilkerson is wrong but Wilkerson represents a venerable tradition within American discourse. It is wrong to try to jump on that bandwagon on the basis of having a dusky skin. These two cretins, or their parents, leveraged some degree of privilege within India to get the fuck away from that shithole. Now they are angling for 'affirmative action' by pretending they have some salience in a global battle against some shite or the other.
Similarly upper caste Indian immigrants must reconcile an awareness of the structural privileges they have inherited even as they find ways to celebrate their personal successes and family histories.
This is what these two tossers refuse to do. Their parents may have emigrated on the basis of useful skills. Their sense of entitlement is so grotesque, they engage in 'extractive introjection'- unconscionably appropriating the psychic pain of oppressed people so as to virtue signal and gain 'affirmative action' for themselves.
Shame on these stupid cretins! Where is Indra Nooyi and where are they?
Hayden White distinguishes 4 theses peculiar to, the late German historian, Koselleck
1) Historical processes are marked by a different type of temporality from that found in nature.
This is obvious nonsense. Natural processes have 'differential rates of acceleration and deceleration'. Moreover, they are Game theoretic. A matrix which fully describes all natural processes would also include all historical processes. The former determines 'social reality', the latter can't because Nature trips up those following soi disant 'historical laws'.
2) Historical reality is social reality.
This is nonsense. Social reality features mimetic effects. However, mimetic targets may be incompossible. History, or hysteresis, matters very little- more particularly if the fitness landscape is changing rapidly.
Koselleck argues that 'historical knowledge' is driven forward by the vanquished asking 'what went wrong?'. But German historiography has not gone forward at all. What went right with that country was getting conquered and having to disintermediate its philosophers and political scientists and historians and other such charlatans. The vanquished learned that their pointy headed intellectuals were utterly shite. Just concentrate on making cool stuff and selling it for a good price so as to buy lots of beer and plenty of sausages.
3) A critical historical consciousness is born of an awareness of a gap between historical events and the language used to represent them.
This is meaningless. A gap between an event and how it is described represents a lie. It may be a white lie. It may be a black lie. But if we are speaking of 'historical consciousness' it is a stupid lie. History Professors are imbeciles. History students may be promising athletes or comedians who make up for three or four years of studying a worthless subject by drudging, for the rest of their life, in some exceptionally boring profession.
To say 'History is a discourse, not a discipline' is to admit it is a bunch of stupid lies repeated by hysterical clowns who know that they are a bunch of stupid liars.
4) 'Modernity' is the name we give to 'History's concept' in our Age.
In other words, History- despite having a room temperature I.Q- has gotten hold of the 'concept', that we are alive now, not in 'days of yore'. This may not seem a great discovery but Hayden White pays a fulsome tribute to Koselleck for making it. No doubt, White's own colleagues are under the impression that they live in the Stone Age.
Progress occurs because people move forward in productive fields. Historians may say 'Aha! But you couldn't make progress unless History had developed a notion of historical progress.' Our reply is, 'fuck off. Monkeys didn't come down from the trees because Monkey historians had come up with a notion of modernity.'
White speaks of Historical knowledge as providing a stable base from with to 'assess and augment' the 'space of experience'. This is nonsense. You need laboratories and scientific instruments to 'assess and augment' stuff which broadens and deepens the realm of the empirical. Historians are completely useless. They are ignorant of 'human reality'. They don't know that it can't 'ever more' become itself, because it already is itself.
Concepts don't matter. They are only useful if they feature Tarskian primitives- i.e. are 'anything goes'. Structural Causal Models may matter but only if they give rise to better Mechanisms. That is an empirical matter. Methodenstreit is pointless when the conceptual game is not worth the empirical candle.
As a case in point, Koselleck thinks comparisons based on temporal series presuppose a 'subject conceived as continuous'. This is not true. The 'subject' may be highly discontinuous. It may only arise above a tipping point or threshold. This does not detract from the utility of Time series analysis. Koselleck mentions Fogel's work on slavery. He doesn't get that Fogel contradicts himself. Precisely because the life-time 'surplus value' extracted was only 10 percent, Slavery was not economically viable. The 'Liberals' knew what they were talking about. The ex-slaves did not clamor to return to plantations under the old arrangement. Why? They were better off outside it- though, no doubt, mortality increased because freedom means more risk-taking. But expected utility still goes up. Moreover, freedom is 'regret minimizing'.
Historians haven't really added anything to our understanding of slavery. Why? They are shit at Econ. So are academic Economists. But, for productive disciplines it makes sense to employ drunken helots as Professors. It gives kids an incentive to hurry the fuck out of College rather than linger on in campus 'safe spaces' talking shite about 'social reality' and 'historical consciousness'.
As perhaps the most outspoken advocate for Affirmative Action based on the immediate granting of Educationally Backward, not to mention Mentally Fucking Retarded, Status for Iyers everywhere, I am subject to tremendous psychological pressure and mental trauma.
Still, I always believed myself to be a fat, stupid, Tambram, man. Now, my faith in myself has been shaken. An increasing number of African American Professors of Grievance Studies have been discovered to actually be White women. First there was Rachel Dolzeal. Now there is Jessa Bombalera who has confessed to being a Jewish lady surnamed Krug. Am I a White lady? Is my fancy Universal Remote, which doesn't work at all, actually a vibrator of some sort? How come I don't like Chardonnay? Is it coz I can only afford Babycham?
Gerald Kuiken lectured in the fields of fluid mechanics and thermodynamics. Then, for some reason, he started writing nonsense about the Bhagavad Gita.
The discussion of “The Class-Caste System with Its Genomic Evidence” shows that the caste system in India was introduced in the last centuries BCE.
This is exceedingly unlikely. In other similar countries, there was a four fold division between a hereditary Aristocracy, a hereditary Priesthood, a respectable class and a slave/metic class. At the top end of Society, there is a constant winnowing whereby less successful people fall out of the caste their grandparents were born into while the reverse happens at the bottom. In India, as elsewhere, when the age of marriage fell, for reasons Dante mentions, endogamy proved a superior solution to the 'stable marriage problem' under conditions of relatively free exit and entry to Tiebout models. This gave a different trajectory to some, not other, 'jatis' on the basis of greater reproductive success, which persists to this very day, for three different reasons
1) better risk-pooling, more 'high trust' internal transactions, and higher mobility thanks to quicker 'discovery' of geographical and occupational opportunities.
2) Tardean mimetics displaces miscegenation. You don't marry your daughter to an athlete to get those athletic genes. You get your sons to imitate the training of the athlete.
3) Jatis form alliances to gain countervailing power over the Stationary Bandit or Autocrat.
Economic forces predominate over a large territory with free entry and exit and competing Tiebout models. At the top, there may be some cosmetic similarity in terms of legitimating ideology and rituals because models have models. But competition between mechanisms winnows out the degenerate hypertrophy of modelling's 'Speigelman monsters'. That's why political science is shit. Only mechanisms matter though, no doubt, Tardean mimetics, nor Marxian shite, is the correct transmission mechanism.
Kuiken, it seems, believes in the magic power of Brahmins. Though the Shraman Religions were flourishing- indeed, smart Brahmins were thronging to such Sects- the Purohits could brainwash the whole country because...urm...Brahmins have a super-special gene right? No doubt, there are some cunts with names like mine who want to believe this about themselves. But they are as stupid as shit. Indeed, we have always been proud of our stupidity. A low I.Q is an advantage, not a handicap, in living a very materially impoverished but extremely pious life. That's cool if all you care about is God. But, it is not a 'regret minimizing' strategy. Thus the history of any given jati shows a propensity to 'hedge bets' by grabbing secular opportunities. Equally, other castes will invest a little in sacerdotal paideia and will cultivate a hereditary spiritual cultus. At the 'Varna' level, jatis may rise or fall. Currently, some 'backward' jatis want 'Vaishya' status. A hundred years ago, they claimed 'Kshatriya' status. But we also know that some recent Pariah castes first became 'afternoon Pariahs' and now are accepted as Brahmins because they provide a necessary service for a very modest cost. But such mobility is predicated on endogamy as the solution for the stable marriage problem. In other words, a notional 'Varna' system has been facilitated by an endogamous jati system which was not envisaged by the putative 'Manus' or primordial 'Law Makers'. Brahmins were equally subject to the norms enforced by this new application of the Price equation. Kin-selective altruism meant being beastly to the miscegenated, unless they pretend to be no such thing, so as to promote higher reproductive success thanks to a curb on 'wasteful competition' for reproductive resources.
Kuiken, misled by textual availability cascades, prefers to stick with the old 'Brahmins have super-powers' (but if Brahmins, why not Jews? Why stop there? Read David Icke and denounce all elites as shape shifting lizards from Planet X who are trying to get us to wear face masks by inventing a story about a Coronavirus so that they themselves can retain their lizard like mouths with which they routinely bite the faces off innocent people like us.)
It is suggested that it was introduced by the brahmins for political rather than spiritual reasons. In Vedic times admixture was the norm, where one chose one’s own partner, as is confirmed by recently found genomic data.
Rape may have been the norm. There is evidence that women are less likely to put up resistance to assault in societies where there are low or no punishments for illegitimacy. Men may prefer not to punish a type of offense which threatens their own coalition stability. Murasaki Shibuku describes a Heian Court where no woman was safe- even an Empress. There can be no secure 'oikos' or 'oikeosis' where endogamy isn't normative. This in turn depends on whether countervailing power can be gained on the basis of economics, which itself depends on the ease of exit and entry and the power of Hirschman 'Voice'.
The Mahabharata, as we have had it for over a thousand years, is explicitly Game theoretic. 'Artha', meaning, has always been related to economia, not akreibia. Of course, by backward induction, the two can always be reconciled. But the Gita does this by embracing Occasionalism and Ontological dysphoria of a florid type. That's fine for eusebia. But economic mechanisms are what matter. Thus Hindu Law is merely 'Samskar'. We say 'the Heavens will fall if we deviate by one iota from what is prescribed'. Then a tipping point is passed and we all say 'What is prescribed is completely different from what was going down. It must have been the Turks or the Brits or the Lizard People who temporarily brainwashed us into thinking otherwise'.
This is perfectly rational. The Schelling focal point for the underlying economic coordination game has changed discontinuously. But this does not affect other mechanisms- e.g. endogamy as solving the stable marriage problem. What is important is to understand why jati based 'arranged marriage' was, and remains, so much more demographically successful. But this isn't difficult at all. It is something all Indians, who have grown-up kids of marriageable age, understand but can't be bothered casting into the game theoretic language of Economics.
Kuiken, who comes from a very different culture with very different sexual mores, understands nothing about Indian Hinduism or Indian Society. Why should he? There may be a Dutch Hinduism which my own descendants will convert to. For all I know, it may be superior in its reproductive outcomes. But, extrapolating present trends, only for declasse losers. 'Artha' is unequivocal. Only Mechanisms matter. Models are misleading.
Pandit Jasraj's recent passing has elicited many lyrical and scholarly tributes but only one ignorant and prejudiced response. Oddly, it is from a professional writer who claims to himself be a Hindustani vocalist. What explains this outcome?
The answer, it seems, is that Amit Chaudhri, like many Indian origin academics, thinks Hinduism is very evil. Globalisation too is very evil- because it's like Neoliberalism, right?- and Neoliberalism is the pits.
It seems Chaudhri, whose Daddy was a box-wallah, had a privileged childhood, equally protected from Hinduism and Neoliberalism, back in the Sixties and Seventies, when everything in the garden was lovely. Then some bad shit started going down. Hindutva and Globalisation occurred. This fucked everything up. Sad.
Amit writes in Scroll-
In the mid-’80s and onwards, the voice required to do justice to the peculiar finesse of Jasraj’s imagination – to the delicate, oblique, but difficult aberrations that comprised his style – was never wholly present.
Apparently, Jasraj had had a heart attack and it took him some time to recover. But, if so, then, like Kumar Gandharva, he had obviously found a way to turn his physical disadvantage into an artistic advantage. His reputation grew because he continued to develop his signature piously romantic style while imparting a thorough musical education to his students. Amit might disapprove of Jasraj's religiosity, a constant feature of his life since the age of 14, and may believe it was somehow imbricated with Globalisation and Neoliberalism and Narendra Modi and Fascism and Nazi Vampires from Outer Space but the truth is, Indian Classical Music has always been closely tied to Religion and Spirituality.
What of Amit's allegation that there were 'difficult aberrations' in Jasraj's oeuvre? Is there any truth to it? No. The Chandogya tells us about Sama Veda. Everything else- including the soundless lament of things no matter how abandoned or forlorn- tells us about Vajd-e-Sama. No aberration occurs where but abreaction is imputable. प्रत्ययलोपे प्रत्ययलक्षणम्. Reception- 'lakshana'- is not affected by what is elided- and, the plain fact is, nothing 'aberrational' was received from Jasraj save by way of commercially convenient elision. But HMV & AIR had imposed that constraint before Jasraj's career took off.
This is not a criticism. Every artist – especially every classical performer – has a period when they’re at their peak, and at their most creative.
Jasraj became more creative precisely because his physical peak had passed. But this is true of most great artists.
Then family and livelihood take over,
The guy was 50 when he had his heart-attack. He had a family and an excellent livelihood. He could have rested on his laurels, taking a few very wealthy students and producing the occasional album for prestige labels which were guaranteed money spinners.
and subtle changes come over the human body: for the singer, this is particularly important - singing, however disembodied and transcendental it may sound, is as much a physical act as walking.
But Jasraj was more than a singer. He created new musical forms and opened new markets for Classical Music. In the mid Sixties, when he began recording, he represented the new generation of singers. They were as good looking as matinee idols and had voices dripping with honey. But their talim and riyaz was just as thorough as that of their seniors whose voices were stentorian and leonine because they had come of age before microphone technology had properly developed. The younger generation's music was romantic, sensuous, yet modern in the sense of appearing a zestful facet of a youthful zeitgeist. Jasraj, who had married into Bollywood Royalty- his father-in-law was Shantaram- cultivated a cool, languorous, glamour which allowed his fans to dream their own dreams. Puritans, or purists, might denounce 'Banditji' of the 'Viagra gharana', but this was like pretending Princess Di was trailer trash rather than an aristocrat to her fingertips. Jasraj himself promoted a narrative of his musical genealogy in which equal weight was given to his 'ishtadeva', or self-chosen idol, Ghazal Queen Begum Akhtar who had been a film actress, as well as his 'kuladeva'- i.e. family Guru-Shishya parampara. He sees his own development as occurring in the big Musical Conferences where, he tells us, he received accolades from the likes of Omkarnath Thakur. In other words, Jasraj understood the middle class 'aspirant' as well as the philistine 'consumer' of high culture. Some fat fucks would want the musical wall paper of his LPs to boom out of the stereo as the khansama poured them another whiskey-soda. But elsewhere in that household, a child or a grandmother would tremble enthralled on the threshold of the realm of the Gandharvas.
Amit speaks of the older style as 'rustic'. This is false. It was vigorous but courtly and reflected the highly correlated, theurgic, 'maryada bhakti' of the Age of Faith whose equal but opposite poles were the King and the Ascetic. But, as Jasraj showed in his later years, it was equally at home with the 'pushti bhakti' of the 'haveli'- i.e. the richly endowed Temple kept up by householders of the mercantile castes. However, prior to his heart-attack, Jasraj had already given us a wonderful rendition of the Sur Das's padavalis. There was nothing unusual about this. Classical singers produced Religious L.Ps for the Hindu mass market. But then, classical singing had been a feature of the older theatrical as well as religious repertoires. This played a part in their legitimation and acceptance as elite cultural forms.
There were no rustic elements in Jasraj’s singing, no overt insistence of bhakti:
Nonsense! He was a marvellous exponent of padavalis and other such theistic compositions. His early discography gives a misleading picture because it reflects the taste of Recording Company executives some of whom published memoirs or magazine articles which enabled fans to get an idea of the constraints faced by musicians of that period.
Jasraj, like every other professional, was trained to sing everything. As a Hindu, he sang bhajans at home and in the Temple.
he treated singing primarily as an art, and gave us a deeply idiosyncratic, original, and modern version of the sophistication of court culture.
This is nonsense. Jasraj wasn't 'idiosyncratic'. He was a master of his art who understood his audience and what new technology had made possible. Court culture was not sophisticated in the modern sense. It was feudal but highly correlated with everything epistemic. Bombay and, back in those days, Calcutta were modern and knowing-too-knowing. Jasraj built a bridge to this metropolitan audience some of whom were indeed 'sickular' cunts of Amit's description.
By modern I mean secular, but not in the Nehruvian sense:
Nehru was a Kaula- i.e. a hereditary follower of Abhinavagupta's esoteric aesthetic philosophy. His family had moved down to Delhi three hundred years ago and pursued secular careers. But they were not cut off from 'developments in the arts'. They were very much part of it.
I mean a 200-year-old development in the arts, preceding Nehruvianism and the Constitution, which emphasises art as diction, texture, and detail rather than just as tradition.
Some 'sickularists' claim that Hindu dhruvapad music had stagnated and that Amir Khusro revived it 700 years ago by getting rid of Sanskrit texts and substituting meaningless syllables to create 'taranas'. However, subsequently, no one has suggested that North Indian Music stagnated. On the contrary it peaked in the early eighteenth century when a libertine Emperor appointed sarangi players as Governors of Provinces. Nadir Shah's calamitous depredations may have lowered standards but Music had certainly revived by the middle of the Nineteenth Century. It is foolish to speak of stagnation when competition across such a wide geographical area was so intense.
Amit is babbling nonsense. What wonderful thing does he think happened in 1750 such that Music revived? Contact with Europe? But that was restricted to Calcutta and does not seem to have achieved anything much. Indeed, Bengali music was retarded not advanced by its fascination with very boring instrumental pieces and the rhapsodisation of vacuity. The rest of India has no interest in Amit's Mummy's 'Rabindra Sangeet' and 'Nazrul Sangeet' and so forth. We will listen to Ajoy Chakroborty and his daughter. Both have the authentic Hindustani theistic vibe. They aren't screechy or meretricious. I recall hearing Amit try to sing 'bin Guru gyan'. His voice faltered. He failed. It seems he lacks Guru bhakti and thus every other sort of bhakti. The result is, he expresses bizarre and puerile views about Hindustani music.
In the mid Sixties and early Seventies, Jasraj, a very handsome and skilled singer, was competing with popular crooners. He understood the need for a 'light classical' repertoire that could go head to head with the Pakistani ghazal singers (nurtured by the legendary Z.A Bukhari who ran Pakistani Radio) and their Indian imitators, who were capturing market-share by rebelling against the rigid All India Radio aesthetic. Sadly, the Indians neglected their own Qawwali tradition with the result that the first 'Global' Hindustani Vocal star was Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. With hindsight, we agree with Fareed Ayaz that the distinction between 'popular' and 'classical' Hindustani music was merely a matter of affectation. Let Haryanvi wrestlers turn into vocalists like the Wadali Brothers. Music belongs to the people. Let Merit make its own way.
Jasraj came of age in a highly inegalitarian milieu. His genius was to nurture musicological excellence in popular styles- perhaps because he had had to teach singing to the metropolitan middle class and understood that he needed to keep things simple. Technique was a gradus ad Parnassum. It mustn't present itself from beyond an esoteric barrier. Indeed, his oeuvre served to remind us that the lighter styles had always co-existed with the theurgic rigors of dhrupad's legitimate heirs. But he was not alone in this. North Indian Classical music completely eclipsed Carnatic Music, even for Tambrams like me, because it was fed by so many diverse streams.
This is a temper to which Ustad Amir Khan and Kishori Amonkar and Jasraj come in various ways, as much as any modern Indian poet or filmmaker did.
This is misleading. Film music had already lifted the horizon of artists. Amir Khan evolved his own style and the use of his songs in superhit films firmly established him as a popular favourite. But, D.V Paluskar, too, featured in Baiju Bawra. Even Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, whom we Indians had managed to entice away from Pakistan, consented to contribute a song to Mughal-e-Azam.
Kishori Amonkar, a beautiful and charismatic performer, came from a female lineage which straddled the Konkan-Maratha theatrical tradition and the courtly Classical tradition. But this could also be said of Lata Mangeshkar and Asha's Bhosle's father! It was inevitable that this crossover, which had occurred in 'vernacular' languages would finally be reflected even in P.W.A (i.e. Leftist) dominated Bollywood. Amit's distaste for Hinduism and 'pre-modern' vernacular jibber jabber, blinds him to the organic manner in which Jasraj's career developed. He thinks there was a 'leap'.
The leap Jasraj is making when embracing this temper is clear from a comparison of his older brothers Maniram and Pratap Narayan’s treatment of the khayal and his own.
Maniram, who is superb, has the old stentorian style. Jasraj has the melodious, honey dripping, style which is microphone friendly. There is no hiatus. It is usual for the Elder to display strength while the Junior displays grace in responsiveness.
It isn’t just talent that separates the younger brother from the older ones (who are considerable performers), but Jasraj’s contribution to the ethos of artistic modernity.
This is nonsense. Young people are supposed to look nice and sound sweet. That is traditional. Modernity is for the elder to wear a toupee and try to sound like a mincing catamite.
Amit's hatred of Hinduism leads him to write nonsense
It doesn’t matter what kind of religious beliefs Jasraj believed himself to subscribe to;
What you believe in religious matters is your religious belief. It is not the case that your belief about your religious belief is different from your actual religious belief. Amit is a fucking cretin. Jasraj's religious beliefs matter because much of his oeuvre is religious. Indeed, the older he grew the more all his singing- or indeed his instruction- was suffused with spirituality of a type univocal with his own declared beliefs. One might say the same about Abida Parveen.
I’m concerned with the person he chose to be when he sang the khayal.
This is foolish. He chose to be a professional musician concerned with spreading love of classical music. That's who he was when he sang khayal or anything else. It may be that an adept of the esoteric philosophy of Abhivavagupta can find more food for thought in Jasraj than, let us say, Bhimsen. Indeed, a 1971 documentary Amit links to suggests just this possibility. But Amit doesn't see that this documentary gives the lie to his central claim- viz. that the early Jasraj was unburdened by 'national or religious' identity.
This person is to be found most compellingly in what one has to now call the “early recordings”, though, when I came to classical music in 1978, these were the only recordings, and these were Jasraj.
Nonsense! Jasraj was found most compellingly in live performances at Sabhas and such like which many people, including myself, had witnessed in the Seventies. The truth is, Jasraj was handsome but he didn't come across as 'modern'. He was at ease with the 'maryada' culture of North India- i.e. he was gracefully deferential. Thuggish youngsters like me would be told to observe how people like Jasraj 'sit down and stand up'. That was North Indian culture. That was 'maryada'. Lack of it showed you were a nothing man with no 'aukat'. Some other great singers who had come up on their own were accused of lacking this courtly culture. But, once they gained great disciples, it was seen that they had 'maryada'. The test was 'sampritti', transmission of 'Voice'. Without it there was no oikeiosis, no maryada, no indefeasible anchor for bhakti. For Jasraj, as a devotee of MahaKali instructed by the Philosopher-Prince Jaywant Singh Vaghela, there is something more. There is the notion of Kālasaṁkarṣaṇī- Time's 'strange attractor' as winnowing Will from Memory in the same manner that Melody winnows Reverie leaving but what Schopenhauer says must survive its own Apocalypse.
Thus listening to Jasraj one can always find univalent foundations for Paravak- Voice which transcends the rending of the World's Veil.
Such deracination is inexplicable- unless one simply accepts that Amit is a cretin, not a buddhijivi at all- and does not understand an ethos other Indians have been familiar with since they became capable of wiping their own bum.
The ethos that I’m describing – the ability to sing in a particular way; the audience’s ability to cherish that kind of singing; the ability to take from one’s built and natural environment and from “tradition” in an open-ended way,
this ethos describes Ustad Amir Khan who was already a big star when Jasraj was beginning his career.
Amit, cretin that he is, thinks Jasraj was imitating Elvis Presley
relatively unburdened by religious or national identity
Hence Jasraj's 'Whose Sari now' and 'Crying on my chappal'. However, it was Jasraj's conversion to orthodox Judaism and his show stopping, Fiddler on the Roof, number 'Tradition' sung in Raag Neelambari which demonstrates how relatively unburdened the early Jasraj was by 'religious or national identity'. Indeed, the fact that Jasraj chose to dress like Marilyn Monroe, while singing 'Happy Birthday Mr. President' to Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, shows he was relatively unburdened by gender identity as well.
– was a delicate balancing act.
Nonsense! Jasraj was not a tight-rope walker. He was the inheritor of a great tradition. As a Hindu, he sang Haveli songs in the pushti tradition. What is wrong with that?
It’s a wonder that it sustained itself for as long as it did before it was largely destroyed by globalisation and its various manifestations, including Hindutva.
Hindutva, like Gandhianism, was autarkic. It opposed globalisation. It wasn't till Vaypayee's second administration that we realized that the RSS would sit quietly while phoren maal entered the country and got sold even in kirana shop. Chee! Chee! What's next? Kids getting kissy on St. Valentine's Day? How shocking!
To encounter the pre-globalisation Jasraj, the artist, go to his first recording, Nat Bhairav.
On what label was this recording made? HMV. His Master's Voice. Surely, that is a global brand?
The truth is Record Executive's dictated what was to be performed and how it was to be performed. A.I.R had created a particular type of consumer expectation which HMV served in typical 'box wallah' style. Jasraj sang differently in concerts. Later, once he had established himself, he could express himself as he wished. A friend of mine produced an album of his where he is highly experimental. But it lost money. That's the problem with great artists. They are 'loss leaders'. Still, they greatly expand the horizons of their craft and open doors for younger people.
Amit is too stupid to do an Adorno type analysis of Hindustani Music. This is not to say Adorno wasn't shit. The truth is, you need to know what happened in Carnatic Music to identify causal factors in Hindustani Music. You must compare like with like. Talk of Hindutva is foolish given that Tamil Nadu is innocent of any such thing. Globalisation has affected North and South Indian classical music differently because it is the composition and affluence of diasporas which has an outsize influence on the industry. The affluent Tamil diaspora is different, sociologically speaking, from the North Indian professionals and entrepreneurs who have settled abroad. But this is merely a function of push and pull factors in migration, not 'Neoliberalism' or 'Globalisation'.
By the Thirties, it was clear that metropolitan audiences had more money power than the Maharajas. Furthermore, even Princes watched movies- indeed the son of a big Zamindar, Pramatesh Barua, made the original of Devdas. Kundanlal Saigal was admired by many great classical musicians despite his 'kotha' style. As technology improved, a more melodious, honey dripping, voice was in demand. Jasraj helped supply that demand but never neglected the arduous business of creating the genuine spiritual article. Some, like Rajan Parrikar, may cavil at 'Banditji'. But he was a great man as is proved by the fact that he has great disciples. No doubt, many Hindus have found solace and instruction in his religious music. Amit may feel this is a tragic outcome. We think Amit is a clown.
