To the Indians

I think it's hilarious that Indians still think of Pakistan as the enemy, when it's clear we don't even stand a chance anymore. This isn't the 60's when we actually had some semblance of military prowesses, we're nothing more than a nuisance factor at this point. Besides, we have better things to worry about, like our own terrorism issues, political struggles and volatile economy being hammered by the high price of oil.

I would argue that Naxalites are probably a more strategic threat, seeing how they've started to go after something very critical to India - infrastructure. The recent attacks on the Essar facilities is a dangerous sign, seeing those type of facilities are crucial to India becoming the economic power that it wants to be.

That's not to discount the tragedy that are these attacks and the recent ones that was have been perpetrated by "Islamofascists" or whatever you would like to call them. I'm not naive to think that the ISI never supported the groups and used them to perpetrate proxy wars in J&K, and even in the heart of India up to the middle of this decade. Let's not however forget that RAW does provide support to Baloch insuregency, and that's completely fair - it's all about realpolitik. However, at this point, Pakistan is reaping the consequences of such a sort-sighted policy (like violence legitimized by religious rhetoric isn't going to end up in your own house, seriously), and frankly, the army might as well deserve the recent attention they've been getting from their estranged offspring.

I don't know why, but I just get pissed when people scream Pakis or muslims at every bit of terrorism, when more Pakis and muslims have been victim to it these last few years. Then again, I love going to muslim forums and try to get them to admit there is a problem in the community where violence against civilians is considered acceptable in some circumstances.

Sometimes I really question the two-nation theory, seeing how the 500 million muslims in the subcontinent might have been a large enough population that would make it difficult to oppress, and then I read about Godhra and see Hindu leaders admit on camera they had free rein, and smack myself on the head. Then I see a Pathwardhan film and think maybe we're just fucked in the head and just need to really stop giving a crap about emotions like pride and take the Marsellus Wallace approach.

I'm just ranting now.

A Letter to the President

A faint smile came across our faces on that day in October 1999. While this marriage was thrust upon us with the nikah being read over military loudspeakers, we did not protest it. As we learned of your non-feudal and middle class background, growing up with a learned civil servant for a father, and a mother who worked for a global institution, we were filled with a sense of hope that perhaps you would be modern and sane. As you brought in a team of technocrats, with actual and relevant experience to their cabinet portfolios, we accepted that perhaps you would be in fact be better than your abusive civilian and military predecessors. As the honeymoon ended, we expected some of your hidden qualities to emerge, which first reared their head in 2002, undoubtedly resulting in your supposed idol, Ataturk, rolling in his grave. But we ignored it, as you placated us with a larger monthly stipend, and we ran off to buy ourselves something pretty. As you insulted and slandered the victims of our tribal jirgas and justice system to the Western media, we rationalized it as eccentricity and as passionate commitment to defending our family. Last March, we saw a striking example of your jealousy and your possessive side, and we waited for it to die down. Alas, your condition only worsened, and while we attempted counselling with Dr. Rice, we weren't too thrilled at her suggested stop-gap solution of introducing a mistress into the equation. Your jealousy reached new bounds when you refused to let us talk to anyone about your behaviour, and insisted we always believe your side of the story. Then you started locking us in the basement, which you laughably insisted was for own safety, perhaps wishing we would fall victim to Stockholm syndrome. Now, as you let us out to demonstrate to the neighbourhood that you are no tyrant, there are sadly only three words left in this marriage – talaq, talaq, talaq.

And here we go again

A little primer from a pissed off Pakistani.

Bhutto will get control over domestic affairs, Mush and the military will control defense and foreign policy. The military will never hand control of the nuclear program to a civilian government because it just doesn't trust them - and as a Pakistani I couldn't agree more.

Bhutto is no savior - just another corrupt and power hungry politician. This would be her third term, and she still hasn't completed a full term. Keep in mind it was her father who made Pakistan an Islamic republic (it was always a secular republic until the late 70s - hell we have a deserted casino lying out on the beach in Karachi). He brought it under the guise of Islamic socialism, and nationalized everything, including education (of course my/Benazir's alma mater was excluded), setting us back 20 years economically - I will concede that industry was an oligarchy, but there were better ways of doing it. Plus, I always found a Berkley socialist from a major land owning family to be amusing.

Nawaz Sharif is no better - he's probably slightly worse because he'd be more willing to work with the Islamic parties if you take his most recent term into consideration. Plus he was big on censorship, though I think (and hope) that the media revolution in Pakistan has gone too far to reverse at this point, but you never know.

You think you Americans have it bad with Democrats and Republicans? Our choices are limited to extremely corrupt and incompetent politicians (Benazir and Nawaz), crazy politicians (Islamic parties) and a military dictator. If you study Pakistan's history, you'll see why we didn't complain for the last 8 years. We love looking at the bottom line, and a half decent dictator who let the media expand and let there be somewhat of a semblance of free speech, assisted by a team of technocrats that has outperformed previous civilian governments of the preceding decade isn't too shabby.

We'd love democracy, but we're not willing to make the sacrifice to our short-term bottom line. I guess a political equivalent of Ricardian equivalence needs to be incorporated into our civil society. But we'll need a civil society before we even get to that point.

Who's to blame for the state of our country?

This is all our fault. No one elses.

We vote along stupid ethnocentric lines that allow politicians to do as they want. We reject the idea of democracy and allow military dictators. We think the only way to solve the problem is to make everything "Islamic" and that will solve everything. We don't vote at all. We don't expect any accountability because we've never had it. We sit and criticize the system and its corruption, but we happily pay bribes when it benefits us. We sit around and blame the CIA, RAW and the Jews for everything. We say the government doesn't do anything, while we do anything to avoid paying taxes. We refuse to invest money in our people, because we believe India is a bigger threat than illiteracy, poverty and disease. We allow foreign powers to dictate our policies so we can buy weapons. We sit and criticize the West for its immoral ways, yet we would run away there if we had the chance. We are willing to sacrifice long-term change for the sake of short-term stability. We are not willing to make a change, because it might negatively impact ourselves. We are not willing to sacrifice ourselves for the betterment of society. Everyone is only worried about either their family, community, sect, job, business, factory, NA seat. Those that try to make changes only do so for the sake of their worldview - whether it be Islamic, liberal, socialist or whatever.

We all say it's the politicians, it's the military, it's the mullahs, it's the feudals, it's the business community, it's the Indians, its the Afghanis, it's Americans or the Jews. It's never us that is the problem. And thats the biggest problem of them all.

The Colour Complex

I've always been aware of the South Asian fetish for fair skin, growing up watching Fair & Lovely ads, but today it really hit me. While browsing through a random cricket forum, someone linked an article from a semi-popular Indian filmi portal called Glamsham.com. I was shocked. Down in the fifth paragraph Rimi Sen has the audacity to state: "Rohit Shetty is amazing as a director. He can make even a black African look pretty". Its not just the statement that offends me - its also the fact that Glamsham saw it appropriate enough to print, and to my knowledge no retraction has been offered on part of Rimi or Glamsham. Worse, a simple Google search shows that the remark only raised outrage in a handful of media outlets - that too from internet outlets radiosargam.com, but the rest are syndicated from it too, such as the Himalayan Times and Sulekha.com

Its really shouldn't be that surprising - a simple look through various matrimonial sites confirms that fair skin is a considered a superior quality in the South Asian marriage market. I'm sure a fair(sic)number of us have heard the issue come up in our own lives whether through relatives or family friends. The recent arranged marriage lawsuit filed in Massachusetts partly charges that the bride-to-be was assured to be "equally beautiful with fair complexion" and turned out to be "ugly with dark complexion". The sad fact is that that the plaintiff is a retired environmental engineer who has been living in North America for the past 30 years. The same attitude prevails across religious lines, and even the level of education, and its far too common - for my liking atleast.

So where does it come from? At this point I'm just going to throw some wild ideas. One can take a full-blown historical approach and use the controversial (and now debunked?) Aryan Invasion theory to make a hypothesis: The Aryans came to India, and setup the caste system basing it on skin colour to retain their dominance over their Dravidian subjects, with the recent colonial experience reinforcing it. Ketan Mehta alludes to this in Lagaan, if I recall correctly, when Kachra the untouchable is rejected by the team, and Aamir Khan inserts skin colour into the caste argument in his dialogue. Or you could just blame it on the English, but I'm sure it can be documented prior to their arrival - please correct me if I'm wrong. Another theory could be that the various invasions of South Asia have historically come from the fairer-skinned inhabitants from the North and the West, and the feudals had formed a habit of colluding with them, and often adapting their customs and ideologies in the process. Muslims aren't off the hook either - an examination of Pakistani's subjugation of East Pakistan/Bangladesh shows that the West Pakistani elite often rationalized their behaviour on their own particular brand of race theory. In Emma Duncan's brilliant book Breaking the Curfew - A Political Journey through Pakistan (unfortunately no longer in print), she describes how the West Pakistanis saw their darker Bengali Muslim counterparts as contaminated with Indian blood, as opposed to their own fairer Persian and Arab lineages.

However, this is a complex topic, and there are also unanswered questions from my side - Is this just a North Indian phenomenon, or is skin colour a commodity in South India as well? Is it prevalent or practised in minority communities like Christians, Sikhs and Parsis as well? Has the problem been exacerbated by skin lightening creams and the media's propensity to prop up fair-skinned beauties, or is just a reflection of public demand and perception? How is the preference for fair skin in South Asia related to similar issues in other societies like Arabia, Africa and Latin America - are they all the products of different historical legacies, or essentially borne of Eurocentric standards from the colonial era? Additionally, I'd love if someone could point to some academic research in this area, so the discussion can proceed on concrete ground, rather than my own whacky hypotheses.

All I have to say is that I'll take Nandita Das over most (if not all) fair-skinned Bollywood actresses any day.

The Canadian plot - in defense of multiculturalism

Its not multiculturalism.

There are 750,000 Muslims in Canada. Yet, this is the first indication of a real threat and plot. Why didn't their siblings and family members also become influenced by their jihadist mentality? They obviously maintained the culture too and did not assimilate. Hell, I would argue the older generation is probably less assimilated, than their kids who are atleast exposed to Canadian society for 15 years on a daily basis when they went to school. The suspects played basketball, went fishing - alleged mastermind even married a white woman. Even looking at the London bombing, Jermain Lindsay was freakin Jamaican. In this case you have a Hindu who converted, so its not like he brought the jihadist culture with him. Richard Reid is another example. There are hundreds of thousands of Muslims kids who might disagree with all they see around them, but yet don't make that leap to violence and jihadism.

I blame the wahabis. See the post below.

Its the Wahabis, stupid - A Treatsie on Islamic Terrorism

Look, its not about religion - its about an intepretation of religion.

All the terrorists bent on attacking global western targets come from or are highly influenced by the Salafi/Wahabi schools of thought. It all stems from Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, where Afghanistan became a dumping ground for Islamic extremists. They were sent by their pro-American governments to support American interests. While there they obviously came in contacts with each other - JI, Abu Sayyaf etc all met with the highly Wahabi/Salafist Arabs who were fighting and establish philosophical common grounds when it came to how to engage Islamic revolutions in their respective countries. Thats why Algeria became such a shiathole in 90's even though everyone is Maliki - because those whackos got new ideas from the Wahabis that its ok to kill civilians and even Muslim civilians because they have been "corrupted".

To say its the whole religion is retarded. Traditional South Asian Islam is very different from Arab Islam - it has a lot of Sufi mysticism mixed in it, and Muslims and Hindus would cohabit shrines of several mystics. The history of Islam in South Asia was different because in most cases the Mughal rulers were quite tolerant (except for a few, especially Aurangzeb who was unquestionably a zealot who forced conversions). Southeast Asian Islam comes from Arab sailors and wasn't brought by force, and it mixes elements of animism and even Hinduism, sort of even producing IslamLite in a way. Its all comes from those farking Wahabis who farked everything up. Pakistan was not an Islamic state prior to the 70's. Alcohol and gambling were legal, cabarets and casinos operated freely and openly. It all really changed in the late 70's and 80's, with the entire Afghan operations. The Saudis (rich off all the oil money coming from the oil crisis)along with the CIA and ISI, funded the growth and of madressas all over throughout the country. Zia in turn supported the Islamisation of society for his own personal power and his beliefs. The curriculum was heavily Wahabi, which is the most rigid and retarded interpretation of the religion that I have ever come across. People don't realize that madressas have been the primary source of education in the subcontinent for Muslims for over 300 years, yet they only started producing terrorists in the last 20 years - the connection is obvious. Even Kashmir - it was hardly as violent in the 30 years following independance, but as soon the Afghan war end trouble begins. There were obviously a multitude of factors at play there (demographics, india not investing enough money in the economy, pakistan exploiting the situation), but the main jihadi component comes into play after this entire Afghanistan situation. Majority of global "Islamic" terrorists suscribe to the Wahabist ideologies. And the influx of this ideology affected not only regular people, but also religious groups who started becoming far more rigid, and even took upon an Arabization of Urdu (even when the language is much closer to Farsi in reality).

What we're seeing now in the London bombings and this plot is the exportation of this Wahabi/Salafist ideology through the internet. However, the problem also lies in the fact that the Saudis have been funding mosques worldwide ever since the oil crisis, and like IMF funding, it comes with conditions as to how the mosque leans in terms of its religious and political slant. Its this ideology that has permeated the young minds of a few Muslims, and it causing the most grief to people everywhere.

Now my understanding is that even if Saudi Arabia has stopped funding everything after 9/11, those informal institutions and networks it created that spread Wahabi thought, are very much alive. All the alliances created between fellow mujahadeen are very much alive. And thanks to the internet, they have an even larger audience, attracting confused, disconnected and generally crazy people to become foot soldiers in the war that they want to rage. Its not reforming Islam that has be done - its the weeding out of this backward, anti-modernist and highly dogmatic and rigid interpretation - hell I think perversion is a better term - of Islam.

Disclaimer:

I'm not blaming the US for creating this mess - they pursued a policy, and unfortunately it had side-effects and blowback, but thats how realpolitik is. But to simply say "Its the religion, stupid" is beyond retarded. Like any pheonomenon, Islamic terrorism is complex and its origins cannot be reduced to something as general as religion or culture, but must be examined through a historical lens.