WTF question of the day

Should libertarians preach?

Not this, not this

Thanks to a rendition by Amit Paul in the recently concluded Indian Idol competition, I came to know about Rabbi Shergill's 'Bulla ki Jaana'.
The lyrics of the song (Suman Kashyap's translation is reproduced below) is written by eighteenth century Punjabi Sufi poet Bulleh Shah.
Bulleh Shah's amazingly powerful lyrics is an example of apophatic, or negative, theology. This attempt to describe the undescribable is found in the Christian, Jewish, Buddhist and Hindu traditions. My favorite is the ever-searching and ever-wanting mantra in Advaita Vedanta:
neti, neti or not this, not this.

In Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, Yajnavalkya is questioned by his students to describe God. He states "The Divine is not this and it is not that" (neti, neti).

Thus, the Divine is not real as we are real, nor is it unreal. The divine is not living in the sense humans live, nor is it dead. The Divine is not compassionate as we use the term, nor is it uncompassionate. And so on. We can never truly define God in words. All we can do is say, it isn't this, but also, it isn't that either". In the end, the student must transcend words to understand the nature of the Divine.

In this sense, neti-neti is not a denial. Rather, it is an assertion that whatever the Divine may be, when we attempt to capture it in human words, we must inevitably fall short, because we are limited in understanding, and words are limited in ability to express the transcendent. [Link]

Plotinus, the die-hard third century Platonist, took inspiration from these eastern ideas, and wrote the famous Enneads.

Generative of all, the unity is none of all, neither thing nor quality, nor intellect nor soul, not in motion, not at rest, not in place, not in time...

If any one were to demand of nature why it produces, it would answer, if it were willing to listen and speak: You should not ask questions, but understand keeping silence as I keep silence, for I am not in the habit of speaking.
(as quoted in Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan's The Bhagavadgita)

Bulleh Shah, Yajnavalkya, or Plotinus's thoughts are a whiff of fresh air. They release us from our habits of thought.

Captain of our souls

What more can we say about our country's darling son? In every way he has shown us the path, inspiring a nation by his ideal of sacrifice and service. More photos here, with descriptions.

Rabindranath said, "If you want to know India, study Vivekananda. In him everything is positive and nothing negative".

"We perceive his influence still working gigantically, we know not well how, we know not well where, in something that is not yet formed, something leonine, grand, intuitive, upheaving that has entered the soul of India and we say, Behold, Vivekananda still lives in the soul of his Mother and in the souls of her children.", wrote Aurobindo.

The monks of Ramakrishna Mission work tirelessly for the welfare of the needy. Their activities are carried out in various parts of our country on the basis of the principles of Shiva Jnane Jiva Seva ("Service to people as service to God") and work is worship.


powered by ODEO

Ustad Rashid Khan declines invitation

Ustad Rashid Khan has declined to participate in this year's North American Bengali Conference. Here's what he had to say:

Dear Debashish da,

I am sorry to inform you that, I shall not be able to perform for your Banga Sammelan Concert to be held this year in.

My experience this year in April, in the US, was a nerve wrecking one. We are Artists, who have been awarded and felicitated by the highest offices in India and abroad. We represent the Culture Heritage of India but I am sorry to say that my experience there was such that I don't think I would want to go there for a second time and face such humiliation.

Hence, I would ask to be pardoned, and an once again taking this opportunity to thank you for having invited me to your conference.

Lots of love & regards to my audience and best wishes to everyone.

RASHID KHAN

You can read the letter on NABC website. Look under the left frame (International Performers).

Ustadji is one of the finest vocalists of Hindustani Classical. He comes from the Rampur Sahaswan Khayal Gharana,and was trained by the famous Ustad Nissar Hussain Khan. We spent whole nights waiting to buy tickets to his concerts at Nazrul Mancha, the Open Air Auditorium at Kolkata. I remember once we touched his feet after a concert. Ustadji is also a glaring example of the success of the Guru-Shishya parampara (which is a way of imparting tacit knowledge) in Indian Classical Music.

A whole day would be spent on practising just a single note. [Link]

Reminds me of a comment in Rock Street Journal: Santana (one of my favorite guitarists) can squeeze color out of one note. Malmsteen's unnecessary speed does not impress me much. Well said!

After hearing him, none other than Pandit Bhimsen Joshi (who comes from the mesmerizing Kirana Gharana) remarked,

"There is now at least one person in sight who is an assurance for the future of Indian vocal music."

Ustadji's rendition of the Yaman is one of the best I have heard till date. If you have napster, look it up. Also hear his Hamsadhwani, a very popular Carnatic raga known by the same name in Hindustani Classical. Here is a clip [10:10 - 7:20; there's a little conversation in between) of Hamsadhwani from Ritwick Ghatak's film 'Meghe Dhaka Tara' (The Cloud Strapped Star).

Only six degrees (of separation)

The band got its name - Moheener Ghoraguli - from the poem Ghora (Horses) by Bengali poet Jibanananda Das.

Victory to thee

Thou art the ruler of the minds of all people,
dispenser of India's destiny.
Thy name rouses the hearts of Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, the Maratha country,
in the Dravida country, Utkala (Orissa) and Bengal;
It echoes in the hills of the Vindhyas and Himalayas,
it mingles in the rhapsodies of the pure waters of the Yamuna and the Ganges.
They chant only thy name,
they seek only thy blessings,
they sing only thy praise.
The saving of all people waits in thy hand,
thou dispenser of India's destiny.
Victory, Victory, Victory, Victory to thee.

The world's rhythm in my veins

I cannot translate this into English. You have to know the language. Words are not words. They have lives of their own.

[Update: The video has been changed. This one has subtitles in English.]

The rabindrasangeet is sung by Debabrata Biswas, the freebird on screen is Anil Chatterjee, and the clip is from Komal Gandhar (E-Flat) directed by Ritwick Ghatak. All his life, Ghatak had protested against the partition of Bengal.

Gayatri Spivak revisited

Arnab Ray has blogged about Radheshyam Rasia's bhojpuri singing, with a brief reference to Spivak's theory of the subaltern.

Two months ago, I had written about the popular and the subaltern, with an embed of the same Rasia Tailor video. But now, I think a more accurate analogy to Spivak's Can the subaltern Speak? is the last scene in Antarmahal, where Jashomati, the zamindar's younger wife played by Soha Ali Khan, commits suicide.



Antarmahal is based on Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay's short story Protima. It's not clear if Jashomati is menstruating (see the movie and read Spivak's paper to know why I ask this question), but the ending is pretty close to Spivak's theory of the subaltern. In her original essay, Spivak writes about the suicide of Bhuvaneshwari Bhaduri, a young woman in her teens in 1926, and tries to drive home the argument that the subaltern as female, cannot be heard or read. Spivak is sometimes difficult to grasp, and is known for her obscurity. The point is made, however, in the last scene and it aptly portrays the original title of Spivak's essay: Power, Desire, Interest.

I am not a student of literary criticism, nor am I driven by the romanticism of protest. Any wrong analogies drawn, I hope, will be forgiven by those who know better.

Didn't you enjoy Amar Pal's mellifluous voice? [starts at 3:00]

The Unvanquished

Migratory birds

I often visit Sepia Mutiny to observe the dynamics of identity as it is revealed in the conversations. SM is a blog that brings together the South Asian diaspora for discussions on issues that are likely to elicit common interest. Sometimes there are discussions on interesting stories, and the importance of viewpoints in such communities cannot be exaggerated more. Indeed, migration is increasingly becoming an important issue to deal with. Families, governments, and multilateral institutions are waking up to this reality.

I was prompted to write this post after I listened to this ‘inspired speech’:

15 years ago India was just curries and cab drivers. Now you have uncles and babus out there in the media trying to tell you India is a superpower and has to have nuclear weapons. They are telling you that India’s economy is shining, and everyone should be investing in India. In fact, they are saying we should outsource everything to India because Indians are the smartest people on the world, right? They make it seem like it is great time to be proud to be Indian, and proud to be a desi. But do you really believe it? Well, you shouldn’t. It’s time for a reality check. If India disappears tomorrow, the global economy will not miss a beat. The city of Hong Kong exports more than all of India. India is by far, in fact, the poorest country in the entire world. There are more people scraping by next to nothing in India than the entire population of Africa. India’s bureaucracy is obscenely corrupt. There are no less than five members of the Indian cabinet who are under investigation for murder, extortion, racketeering, arms trafficking, cutting deals with Saddam Hussein. If you are from Pakistan or Bangladesh the situation is no better. In fact, it’s even worse. The whole region is just as likely to collapse, as it is to succeed. So here is the question: are you still going to be proud to be Indian, when India’s no longer shining? Are you going to be proud to be from Pakistan, when the country crumbles under civil war? Our job as desis is not to pretend that India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are great. They pay people to do that. Our job is to find ways to take advantage of what we have here, and make what they say a reality, to make that hype come true.

When is the right time to be proud to be an Indian?
In fact what you should be proud of?
When is the right time to leave India?
When is the right time to come back, if that's an option?

I remember a conversation between a schoolgirl and her grandfather in the movie Naseem (Urdu for morning breeze). Mayuri Kango asks Kaifi Azmi (famous lyricist and poet; Shabhana Azmi’s father) why hid he stay back in India after the partition. He said that he stayed back because of a tree in his backyard. He loved the tree so much, and he couldn’t take it with him.

While some people are rooted in their destiny, others may think differently. In fact, it would be interesting to see any research on migration tendencies. Like the standing ovation problem, it might be that migration too follows non-linear dynamics. Once there is a trend-setter (in the family; among friends; the Guptas next door), others follow suit. As Indian doctors are facing this court ruling in UK, I am sure thousand of doctors in India are looking up the details of USMLE. And if the initiatives of Naresh Trehan are any indication, migration may provide win-win solutions (at least when measured in money flows).

Recorded remittance flows to developing countries are estimated to reach $199 billion in 2006. The true size including unrecorded flows through formal and informal channels is believed to be significantly larger. [Link]

and this joint Duke University - UC Berkeley study reports that Indians have founded more engineering and technology companies in the US in the past decade than immigrants from the UK, China, Taiwan and Japan combined. Of all immigrant-founded companies, 26% have Indian founders (p. 4).

Migration within India, however, isn't only about money flows. Our country is diverse on many different attributes other than income opportunities. Specification can make us see things more clearly. So next time when someone tells you a particular move has immense opportunity, follow up with opportunity of what? Such qualifiers bring out the essence - suddenly the colorful seem so boring, and the seemingly dull reveal interesting ideas. Obsession with the distant paradigm has many unintended consequences. For example, the ghastly killing of Bihari laborers by the ULFA terrorists in Assam was instigated by migration.

We know Karnataka and Maharashtra has taken some bold stands on this issue. With Kannada and Marathi made compulsory, birds of a single feather (of any hue - moving migrants, urban upstarts, slighted suburbanites, or poverty-stricken peasants) cannot flock together. May be they still will, but migratory birds have to know the birds of the local habitat. They cannot continue to hang out in their cozy little circle of similar others. For this possible consequence alone, both Karnataka and Maharashtra deserve congratulations.

If all this posturing comes across to you as fierce nationalism (or that wonderful phrase – ‘regional chauvinism’), let me hasten to add that I know I am sticking my neck out. But what isn’t so stark is the slow, gradual, almost innocent, 'blending in' - it is more difficult to deal with, because the process is gradual, as opposed to any radical venting of frustration. The gradual process is more oppressive (killing too?) because it works its ways slowly, treating anything other than the prevalent and expected moves as illegitimate. It is the same reason why we have got used to Bollywood worthies speaking in English in the award ceremonies of Hindi cinema. It is the same reason why - even in India - you have to justify your wearing a sari or a kurta. It also creates gulfs between generations, between people (we knew earlier; not the new found ones), between grandsons and grandparents, and between friends. Driven by economic reason, the migratory birds do not belong anywhere They genuflect to the only God they know, convenience that is, and are generally alert to survival.

When Rabindranath’s son-in-law Nagendranath Gangulee went to America to study agriculture, this is what Tagore wrote to him:

To get on familiar terms with the local people is a part of your education. To know only agriculture is not enough; you must know America too. Of course if in the process of knowing America, one begins to lose one’s identity and falls into the trap of becoming an Americanized person contemptuous of everything Indian, it is preferable to stay in a locked room. Those who are immature and weak-minded tend to lose their own identity when they go abroad and become spoilt - better for such people if they keep to their own home environment. From childhood all of you have displayed a Brahmo repugnance for other people's social customs and historical traditions. I know of no worse superstition or prejudice - unless you drive it from your mind, your foreign education will never benefit you fully.

The political leaders of India, as usual, are yet to discuss these issues. Till now we have not heard of any plans to deal with the twin problems of workforce mobility and offspring schooling. CNN-IBN had a shallow discussion on this issue and once again offered a twisted logic about the uselessness of keeping the languages alive 'artificially'. What is artificial and what is natural? When Steve Jobs dangles the ipod in his keynote, puts it on the shelf of a store and bombards us with the ads, is he not forcing, or creating a market artificially? Not only is this dichotomy misplaced, anarcaps should know that there are no market forces for languages. Money may be fungible (economists say that; i have doubts), but language isn't. The corner store that relies on its 'location' in the downtown has a captive audience that keeps coming back, regardless of boom or bust. Location matters (ask the Singur farmers) and languages are location specific. Choice-chasers need to understand that the answer lies in the ‘and/also’ solution: both Kannada and English. The market is speaking in English. When is the right time to jettison Telugu? Or Bengali? Riding on the market wave, if the nonchalant choice-chaser encroaches into others' way of living, and has an indifferent swagger for local customs, friction is inevitable and only a matter of time. Cause and effect is interdependent as the pratītyasamutpāda said long ago [recently some sociologists have started interdependent sampling].

This is not regionalism, but a larger tolerance for many universalities than the oppressively narrow opportunistic recipe of learning the shopkeeper's language only. English and Hindi are the lowest common denominators for communication in India. The lowest common thing need not rule the roost. As the market drives migration within the country, the LCDs will gradually flex their muscles and obliterate all regional identities. I think parents have a responsibility to teach their kids the mother tongue, the language of the state where he/she has started schooling, and English. If this is too much work, upward mobility seekers are free to make alternate arrangements (for them or for their kids - whichever works best) for 10 years (class 1 - class 10) in their career. The government can play parent-parent, if opportunistic parents do not see opportunities to learn local languages/ customs.

What about your choice of moving every year? Sure, Keep moving. Who is stopping you? But languages need not move with you. You adapt. Indeed, for birds who move every year, the forests need not offer any solution. The government has no burden to attend to choice obsessive disorders. The individual should decide what works best. I think the three language solution is easily manageable as several studies have shown that children pick up languages much faster than older people. It also forces migratory birds to get accustomed to the local birds, communicate with them, and learn and share their way of life. The 3LS also requires some awareness and initiative on the parents' part, a little less economic reason, and a little force from the government.

However, for those who do not put all eggs in the basket of survival, the question still remains. Why migrate? And like most hard questions, this one too gravitates to the debate between Krishna and Arjuna in the Mahābhārata, between consequentialist concerns and deontological ethics. Find your true calling.

This is also an occasion to celebrate this rabindrasangeet (Debabrata Biswas's voice), captured poignantly on celluloid by Ritwick Ghatak in his Jukti, Takko ar Golpo (Reason, Argument and Story):




The poem was generated from Somen Bhattacharjee's digital library.

The pretense of knowledge

In his Nobel lecture, Hayek called it "a mechanical and uncritical application of habits of thought".

At some point in their lives, these people develop a perspective. Then, for the rest of their lives they vigorously defend it (the perspective). Seeing is not believing, believing is seeing. Equipped with the twin tools of language and evidence-that-supports, they can steer gullible you into their make-believe dens. Argumentation is war, and two weapons are required to make headway. First, mastery of using words that portray a basic proof of grasp; this helps in gaining legitimacy. Second, practice of rhetorical reason - as Aristotle says, 'the faculty of observing, in any given case, the available means of persuasion' - or the selection of required evidence for any topic. Perhaps, to stem this perpetuation of confusion, Wittgenstein remarked ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent’. But bloggers will not listen. Opinions are a dime a dozen.

What can you do? When you have identified the dork, stop taking that person seriously. A lack of doubt, a nagging consistency in all judgments is suspect; methinks it is the first step towards fascism. Stay away from opinionated people masquerading as experts. Stay away from cock sure people. And by all means cling to those who nurture some ambivalence, who do not have all the answers. You will find their company comforting. To maintain your sanity you need spiritual fruits, not religious nuts.

The internet is a great repository. Look for poems, photographs, recipes, travelogues, movies, music. A picture is worth a thousand words, a good recipe a taste of joy, and music is the food of love. Stay foolish. Watch, listen, taste, laugh, work hard, enjoy!