Terror in Bangalore

July 26, 2008 – 9:19 am

I wasn’t born in Bangalore. I don’t live there now. But ever since I was a child, it’s been the seat of my family.

I’ve smelled the jasmine and diesel in the air. I’ve seen the elections of civic-minded criminals, and heard the hurly-burly cry of Commercial Street for years. In short, I claim Bangalore as my own.

Eight explosions erupted across my city like weeping lesions yesterday.

According to all the news sources I can tap, the prime suspects in this matter are either the members of a banned student organization, the Students Islamic Movement of India, or the militant organization, Lashkar-e-Toiba. I don’t know enough about the nature or history of either group to even offer an opinion. And honestly, I can’t say that I care who eventually will claim the credit for all of this. Whoever it was, they’re no different than any other breed of savage.

Every time I go to Bangalore, I visit the Church of the Infant Jesus. It’s near the center of the city, a shy palace of stone and stained marble. Shall I tell you why it’s wonderful? Because, despite the name, it’s a shrine for every person of any faith. Read More »

By Joe Hormes | Posted in Columnist, Current Affairs, south asia, terrorism | Comments (0)

Makotai, Ancient Jews, and a 2500-year-old Ship: Globalization in an Ancient World

July 10, 2008 – 3:51 pm

YaleGlobal, the magazine of the Yale University Centre for Study of Globalization, describes globalization as a historical process that began with the first movement of people out of Africa into other parts of the world: “Traveling short, then longer distances, migrants, merchants, and others have always taken their ideas, customs, and products into new lands. The melding, borrowing, and adaptation of outside influences can be found in many areas of human life.”

The movement of technology, food and plants, and ideas are three major areas where this process made its impact from the early days of history. New historical and archaeological studies have proved how this process developed through centuries and how mankind was going through a process of integration ever since they came to know how to travel.

Recently, two major archaeological findings from the two hemispheres of our planet brought into focus the ancient roots of this process. The first report came from Yucatan in Mexico, where scholars unearthed evidence of a 1500-year-old market in an ancient Mayan city. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Society, money, south america, south asia | Comments (2)

Eating Fish and Sanyasa: Vivekananda’s Travels in Travancore

June 21, 2008 – 12:42 pm

The other day, I came across a very interesting document - an account of Swami Vivekananda’s visit to Thiruvananthapuram in December 1892. It was written by K Sundarama Iyer, a senior officer in the education department who was a tutor to the crown prince Marthanda Varma, almost 20 years after the visit. The long narrative, named “Reminiscences of Swami Vivekananda,” is appended to the four volume book, The Life of Swami Vivekananda, published by Advaita Ashramam, in 1961.

It is a long narrative, a fascinating and evocative one, as it brings to life not only the personality of this great sage but also the life in Travancore at the turn of the 19th century: its concerns and topics of high society discussion, its aloofness to the world outside, its court life and its encounters with the modern ideas of the time.

The Swami was on his tour of south India, as every monk from time immemorial used to do, going from place to place, visiting pious householders, accepting their obeisance and giving them advice, and then moving onto the next place… Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Religion, hinduism, south asia | Comments (1)

When Humanitarianism Loses Its Message

May 3, 2008 – 9:29 am

I attended a silent vigil outside the Pakistani High Commission in London last week. It called for the abolishment of the death penalty in Pakistan and came just one week before the planned execution of a man held on death row for 18 years. Amnesty International expressed concern that this could be a case of mistaken identity.

Amongst the overly opulent urbanity of Lowndes Square, ten people quietly held banners. One stated: “7,000 Prisoners on Death Row” - a controversially large number.

The small group of protesters included two students, a Member of Parliament, and a spokesperson for Amnesty International.

In a handing over of letters, John McDonnell MP was invited inside the High Commission’s office to present the case for the potentially wrongly accused prisoner, and to appeal for the end of the Pakistani death penalty.

Amnesty said it was very likely that the execution of the man will be stopped in order to have his identity verified independently. Moreover, they are hopeful that the new government in Pakistan may suspend the death penalty as early as this week.

I spoke to Niall Couper, the Amnesty spokesperson, who argued that the death penalty presents a serious moral cost to the societies in which it is practiced. A government’s legal system that sponsors the killing of its citizens, he explained, sends a message that homicide is an acceptable punitive measure. This, he said, can actually increase the rate of murder rather than reduce it.

Towards the end of the vigil, as banners were packed and the demonstrators began making their way back, another moral cost emerged. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in Current Affairs, death penalty, europe, south asia | Comments (0)

Yoni is the Wrong Damn Word: Marginalization and Exoticism

April 30, 2008 – 5:48 am

Why, oh, why does it have to be Yoni Ki Baat? Why? I’m South Asian, right? I’m solid South Asian. So why does it make my blood boil that South Asians are doing an adaptation of the Vagina Monologues called Yoni Ki Baat?

Well, I don’t have a damn yoni, for one thing. The first time I read the word yoni, it was in a Nancy Friday book of sexual fantasies and some white chick was describing her power centre being plunged or whatever and calling it a yoni.

I do not call my c*** yoni. I’m Pakistani. We don’t do Sanskrit in Pakistan, not on purpose, anyway (I take no responsibility for accidental Sanskrit). Pakistani vernacular has many words for vagina and none of them is yoni. So running into a performance of Yoni Ki Baat by South Asians in Seattle really just fries my onions all wrong.

However, I can deal. I know that in the US South Asian communities are dominated by Indianness and this is simply a reflection of the sub-continental hegemonic power structures. I don’t like it, but I’m a lazy person and that’s not a fight I’m going to pick on a 6-month quickie in Seattle.

A little bit of investigation, however, brings me the news that, no, in fact, even in Indian contexts, using yoni for vagina is extremely problematic. It’s a Sanskrit word. Sanskrit is the base for north Indian languages, including, most prominently, Hindi. Using it successfully projects, once again, north India as true India and Dravidian south India as other. As incidental. As internal or private. As “ethnic.” As not-really-there.

Well done, feminism. Read More »

By Kyla Pasha | Posted in Arts & Literature, Society, feminism, sex, south asia, women | Comments (10)

Who’s Yo Savior, Biatch!

February 8, 2008 – 1:52 am

A few months ago I was standing in line at the post office talking to someone on the cell and every now and then I used an Urdu word.

Sometimes when I speak Urdu, I say an English word with a FOB accent, especially if the conversation is funny. At the post office I was having most of my conversation in Urdu (a rarity), and then I pronounced the English word “Actually” as “Eckchully” because that is how South Asians speak English.

The guy in front of me was a Hispanic guy with three kids. He started talking to his kids, and they started snickering. I didn’t strive to hear what they were talking about, but they didn’t try to hide it.

I heard the words “Saddam Hussein” and “Al-Qaeda” and “Osama bin Laden.” Then the guy made some comment about Africa.

Great, I thought, a geography-challenged bigot.

My first thought, I kid you not, was this: that is not a white person, so it doesn’t matter. There is a reason why I hold white people to a higher standard.

Through most of my life, its been white people who’ve enacted most of acts of ignorance upon me, whether it was throwing molotov cocktails at mosques while we played outside, or calling me and my boys sand-niggers, or shooting at my family members after 9/11. So when a dude who was darker than me displayed the same kind of ignorance, and did so openly to his kids, I was a little confused, and wanted to let it slide.

But then he made the Africa comment. Read More »

By Ali Eteraz | Posted in Columnist, Society, north america, racism, south asia | Comments (12)

Politics and Tragedy

January 13, 2008 – 11:28 am

Wherein lies the tragedy of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination?

Common wisdom holds that the implications surrounding the demise of one of Pakistan’s major democratic leaders are tragic. Others hold that her killing reveals the sinister confluence of wicked forces at work in Pakistan.

Others hold that that the tragedy lies in the fact that she comes from a family that has lost far too many of its sons and daughters. Others hold that the tragedy lies in the loss that will be felt by her young children.

But what if we simply refused to assign any form of tragedy to Bhutto’s killing? What if we said: it is tragic that another human being has been killed, and that is all I have to say.

Why should I exalt the tragedy of Bhutto’s death, when I rarely exalt the tragedy of anyone else’s death? Why does she get this preferential treatment? Simply because she was involved in politics?

Nietzsche said that most ancient Greeks didn’t care about politics. They believed that they were utterly incapable of affecting the decision-making in which the powerful engaged, opting, therefore, to busy themselves with other things: things upon which they could have direct influence, namely art.

Why do we modern people think that politics have changed? Read More »

By Ali Eteraz | Posted in Columnist, Current Affairs, south asia, terrorism | Comments (3)

The Mindless Menace of Violence in the Muslim World

December 29, 2007 – 2:18 am

One more act of senseless violence greets us in the Muslim world this week. One more suicide bomber or assassin, or whatever we can call them these days, kills others and himself in a moment of premeditated madness.

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is tragic. There can be no doubt about that. But what shocks me today, as I am shocked on a daily basis with the stream of murders and suicides in Pakistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, and so many other countries is this nagging question: Where on earth do they find them?? Where on earth do the plotters and schemers find so many willing men and women of young age to mould into their insane vision of the world? How did those who planned this latest act of violence stumble upon this latest specimen of misguided fervour and convince him (at least it seems to be a him at the time of writing) to go and end his life by assassinating a mother of three children. How did they get through to this guy? And more importantly, why is it so goddamn easy to find self-terminating assassins in our region?

I am outraged as I was outraged on the day I witnessed the mothers, fathers and grandfathers grieving for their loved ones in an Amman hospital after the massacres of the inverted 9/11 (in Jordan, it was 11/9 if one follows the American date method, and proof that the killers and blood suckers infesting our region have a rather bizarre and morbid sense of humour that, I guess, makes some weird sense to the lunatics in our midst).

I am as outraged as I was in the summer of 2005 when a bunch of lunatics in Sharm El Sheikh drove their bomb-laden cars into a crowd of underpaid workers who apparently were not allowed the simple pleasure of a cup of coffee at the end of a long working day.

I am outraged as I was when I heard this last summer that a Jordanian Neurosurgeon thought that the best way to make use of his years of study and research is to go and bomb the world and all that is in it outside the Tiger Tiger club in Piccadilly.

Now, some of the readers will say: “Oh, come on, that’s not totally accurate; you are comparing the murders of innocent civilians with a targeted assassination of a leader who some Pakistanis discredit … etc.” But that is not the point. Read More »

By Nasser Ali Khasawneh | Posted in Columnist, Current Affairs, Religion, islam, south asia, terrorism | Comments (15)