The Education System

Awesome, detailed and comprehensive analysis. But depressing. I have felt this whenever I participated in any school or even college practices, for example in the CBSE or state boards, or an Engineering college. A system of extreme scores-orientation and filtering, combined with a Potemkin village-like teaching, learning and evaluation. Even the post-graduate students and teachers show zero interest in any work. They are pre-occupied with finishing the portions, administration, event management and social ceremonies.

There is a system design for subtle racketeering everywhere. The syllabus is hopelessly broad, the subjects irrelevant to a future career, the practicals a farce, yet the frequent tests, homework assignments and examinations are strenuous. Without doing private tuitions with either the same teachers who officially teach in the class, or more expensive coaching classes, a student is not even n the good graces of the evaluators.

Added to that are the large-scale evaluation rackets. Scores are arbitrarily changed and even distributed in weird statistical patterns. In the ICSE batch 2013, out of 140807 students, no one had a score of 56-57, or anywhere in the interval 0-30 and 96-100, in English. In history/civics, computer applications, science and Hindi, remarkably similar patterns were observed. What is this special score between 56-57 that no student gets? For all subjects the list of un-attained marks is – 36, 37, 39, 41, 43, 45, 47, 49, 51, 53, 55, 56, 57, 59, 61, 63, 65, 67, 68, 70, 71, 73, 75, 77, 79, 81, 82, 84, 85, 87, 89, 91, 93. Yes, that’s 33 numbers!

Clearly, there is a systematic yet lopsided assigning of scores done at some central level!

Other types of bad ecosystems, money-making opportunites and general bad sanitation are well described by Shri Pankaj Saxena here.

But we need more dissemination of such diagnosis, more such system-level analysis. We also need to remove things from the syllabuses like:

– lettering in Engineering Drawing (in these days of fonts and CAD)
– Handy Andy in High-school English
– whether a subject in on a state list, central list or concurrent list, process for legislating money bills in Class 9 Civics
– whether rivers/mountains are epeirogenic or orogenic, in class 9 Geography.
– and innumerable others

I say this because the language of such texts is unreadable, difficult to retain and only encourages rote learning. Who benefits from such learning in 10-12 different subjects every year? This does not equip a person to increase his aptitude, do well in various competitive exams or interviews or get practical knowledge in a vocation.

What is the way to seed an alternative eco-system?

Why Indian traffic is bad

The lack of training before issuing a driving licence is the main cause. The DL acquisition process is a farce that results n a tragedy.

In Dubai, Singapore, Scandinavia or Canada, the trainee has to undertake a rigorous schooling in safety. Huge text books on rules have to be learnt. Things like
1. margin to the vehicle before you,
2 braking distance at 60 or 90 kph, (i.e. physics of deceleration)
3. always have a 3 sec distance between own and the vehicle ahead of you – as it takes about that much time to react to a sudden breaking by that vehicle.
4. signaling correctly before lane change,
5. Changing lanes only after yielding to all passing vehicles on the lane
6. yielding to the vehicle on the priority road (marked by a Yield sign on the non-priority road),
7. constantly watching the rear-view and the two side mirrors,
8. night driving without high-beam lights,
9. how to join and exit a roundabout,
10. catching the blind spot between the rear-view and the side mirrors when changing lanes
11. Overtaking only on the fast lane
12. Choosing the exit ramp to make an over-bridge U-turn (no U-turn allowed on highways)
13. Knowing when the red light is likely to come and decelerating before that, to avoid beating a red light
14. How to start from stationary, by signaling, looking for clearance and yield to “in-motion” vehicles before joining the lane.
15. How to yield to buses starting from bus stops.
16. How to overtake on a two-lane road, calculating the probability of an oncoming vehicle even when you don’t see it. Especially in curves.
17. How to slow down and stop at pedestrian crossings, and ask them to cross with courtesy.

are taught. The lessons last from 4-9 months. The final driving test is frequently not passed on the first attempt. A theory test of 50 questions, out of which 45 have to be correctly answered. When a learner passes a driving test, she/he celebrates as though she/he got a degree !

In contrast, In India

1. Drivers grab road-space
2. Overtake from the prohibited side
3. Drive in curves and zig zags
4. Come straight frontal at you from “your” lane (i.e drive on your left and their right side)
5. Do not signal while changing from stationary to start in a narrow, busy street.
6. Crowd each other out on railway crossings, blocking every one for 20-30 minutes.
7. Keep their side mirrors closed.
8. Do not slow down for pedestrians even at pedestrian crossings.
9. Have no regard for school zones and child zones.
10. Cross you from the extreme left to extreme right without yielding to you, who is going straight.
11. Have a “might is right” attitude. (Trucks, Buses, Mini vans, Jeeps, big cars, then small cars)
12. Never bother who is at fault. Lung power or muscle power is the decider.
13. Use high-beams to blind the oncoming driver.
14. Drive without lights in a dark night street, at high speeds.

The Govt. Road Transport Dept. policy contributes by

1. Releases unbearable (and increasing) number of vehicles to ply on bad roads every day
2. Do not enforce traffic rules on basic safety
3. Do not train their own traffic personnel.
4. Traffic staff is understaffed and underpaid.
5. Have speed bumps without markers. Some of them are so bad that they hit the chassis of small vehicles, at the slowest speed.
6. Make U-turns available on highways, instead of exit ramps and overbridges to cross to the other side of the highways
7. Do not enforce public transport only lanes
8. Do not have sidewalks for pedestrians, separate lanes for bicycles, hand-carts etc
9. Dig up roads and leave them without putting up boards and signals.
10. Leave manholes uncovered.

If this insane traffic culture on all sides is not the main cause of accidents, I don’t know what is.

My Quora Posts

I’ve been writing on the Quora platform since Sept 2015. So far, I’ve answered questions relating to Infotech, Philosophy, programming how-tos, databases, carnatic music, books, art, literature and  “homework-assignments disguised as questions”. Some highlights.

1. Database Design (1, 2)
2. Project Management( 1, 2, 3 , 4 , 5)
3. Neuroscience
4. Software Process
5. Programming Tools
6. Philosophy (1, 2)
7. Existence
8. Parallel worlds

Enjoy my pastime!

Innovation Track Records of foreign vs. India-based tech firms

Innovation Track Records of foreign vs. India-based tech firms.

1. IBM – The IBM 360/370, mainframe computers, mini-computers(AS/400), The Personal Computer, Ted Codd and the Relational Database Theory, programming languages like Fortran, PL/I and myriad others, The Compiler Discipline, the Backus-Naur form, Virtual Storage, Deep Blue, Watson and countless others.
2. Apple – The Apple II, The Macintosh, iPhone, etc.
3. Microsoft – Visual Basic, Internet Explorer, Office Suite, SQL Server, and so on.
4. Borland (Heard of it ?) – Turbo Pascal, Sidekick, Paradox, Software Lifecycle managers, Delphi and so on.
5. Digital Equipment – PDP-11, Vax/VMS, Ultrix etc
6. AT & T – Unix.
7. Sun – Java
8. Oracle – Databases
9. SAP – Enterprise Systems.
10. Google – Should I list ?
11. Nokia ?
12. Samsung ?
13. Commodore – Heard of it ?
14. Atari – ?
15. Sony – ?
16. Du Pont – ?

India:
1. Infosys – Finacle ?
2. Wipro – ?
3. TCS – ?
4. Biocon – ?
5. Ranbaxy – ?

Both in quantity and quality, it is the consistent difference between mountains and molehills. Why the difference ?

Because the education and entrepreneurship Eco-system in independent India was
1. Mug-and-vomit in exams.
2. Do Thy Karma, fight for Thy quota, and exploit Thy permit as licensed.
3. Practice victim-hood and live with rations.
4. Do not question teachers, seniors, bureaucrats, policemen or any other authority figures.
5. Divide against your own people, form identity-based groups.
6. Pull down anyone trying to get up, like the unfunny joke about the Indian crabs.
7. Grease and lubricate the rules and regulations system.

This was not due to our innate inferiority, but a fostered Nehruvian cultural policy. NRN realizes it, he is the product of the same culture.
His sense of inferiority in our society is correct, as seen from his track record. In fact, he worships the protestant work ethic and considers that to be the key to greatness. I agree with him, except that the creative part has nothing to do with a religious work ethic.

While in “phoren” countries, the systems foster and demand this – you better do something new and big. All the time.

Are Indian CS Engineers Untrainable?

Professor Dheeraj Sanghi believes so. He thinks that the reason is copying instead of coding. Not that simple.

Copying code per se is not the real issue. Nowadays experienced developers and lead engineers also do it.

The software world is awash in code. There are places like Stackoveflow and Code project that have snippets, examples, answers to how-to questions on any programming, design or database topic that you want. The technology landscape changes all the time. The real issue is understanding a piece of code, a design issue, a risk or a customer requirement.

The best brains in the world have already solved many problems in great detail. You can immediately access those solutions. The challenge is understanding the solution, where it can be applied, who you can tap for trouble-shooting and how to collaborate “virtually”. It is best practices, code reviews, test packages and algorithm design that are more important than knowing all kinds of sorting, hashing and red and black trees.

Modelling the world is the key. Indian CS education and every other syllabus (like ICSE) is breadth-first in its approach, and wants students to swallow and digest impossible amounts of information. There is no time for such digestion. That is why many resort to copy-paste.

Faculty are too ivory-tower oriented and not many have felt the pain of the business, corporate and start-up world. They are secure in their tenure and never have to account for mistakes and failures in projects and products. Seldom do they have deadlines (except in finishing portions). The culture is hand-me-downs, not engagement with the class. Its very different from the way it is done in UK, US, Europe or Australia. Look at the quality of the online courses and MOOCS from Stanford, Cambridge or Oxford. Much to learn in course design.

Politically correct British Liberals still love India, bashingly

India’s deadly mid-day meals.

“Can’t India do anything right?”

“Tell me, if there is anything this misconceived entity India ever got anything right from the time of its premature infantile?”

“India is a failed State covered with a well polished veneer of respectability.”

“The problem with free school meals in India is India itself – a place in which appalling corruption takes place on a daily scale and bribery is the only way to get anything done. Why do you think that so many Indians want to move to the UK / Europe and the US? Precisely because such appalling injustices do not take place in these countries. You should count yourself fortunate to have been born into a first world country.”

“The country of 1.2 billion is in gargantuan mess. Both these articles must be put on top of the Guardian site for the world to know the excrement India has become.”

“And no, it is not because the first world imposed these conditions on poor countries. Britain will always prosper because of Britons and their greatness. Any country that doesn’t prosper is because of themselves. India is a largely lawless place of bribery, violence, corruption, and oppression of women and minorities on a massive scale. Slavery is also commonplace.”

Delhi’s Traffic Chaos

“I was considering a motorcycling holiday in India, after much research and fear for life and limb I think I may go somewhere else..”

“I agree that Asians only should be restricted to bicycles.”

“I have been to Delhi 3 times in my life, and promised myself the last time that I would never make myself go back. Just existing there was so tiring, unless you lock yourself in your hotel room to hide “

“Sounds like my experience of Chennai… went with work a couple of years ago and was convinced I was going to die.”

“I can confirm that the traffic is as bad as this article says – though thankfully my son-in-law was able to negotiate the traffic – I just closed my eyes.”

“The stench from clapped-out cars and lorries is eye-watering. Quite often you find yourself behind a cloud of soot so thick that you can’t even see the vehicle it’s coming from.”

“in 2005 I went to West Bengal for 10 days, by the time I came home I still wasn’t sure which side of the road they drive on”

“I’m reading Between the Assassinations by Aravind Adiga at the moment. It echoes the general sentiment that India is totally mental.”

You’d think that a left liberal British Newspaper would have decent readers. But the amount of head-shaking, how-can-you-Indians-be-so-wretched, why do you create and live in such hells etc  – is predictable on the Guardian of left-liberal values. It is a favourite opinion-maker for Indian left-liberals  and radicals as well – like Ramachandra Guha, Arundhati Roy, Amartya Sen etc. They write quite regularly for the newspaper. Is it difficult to detect the  Raj Nostalgia? They seem to think that if only they were in charge, Indians would be much better off, everything spic and span, gleaming children, shiny hospitals, a toilet for every one and so on.

Do these enlightened readers remember the man-made Bengal famine of 1943, the British Raj-managed impoverishment of India, or Britain’s role in the partition of so many  nations ? That would lead to less head-shaking, so they don’t. And after all, their great humanist pioneer – the writer of A Tale of Two cities – thought Indians deserved extermination. So its not surprising that perhaps up-to 10 million Indians were killed in reprisals after 1857.

What IS surprising is the idea that today, the British have had a change of attitude and things are really nice between erstwhile Masters and Subjects. Robert Clive was of course astonished at his own moderation! According to Lord Macaulay, Clive gave peace, security, prosperity and such liberty  to millions of Indians, who had for centuries been the prey of oppression. What we need to remember is that they still want to be arbiters of huge collective fates. The British populace thought then, as now,  that they always were and are angels. The colour of their political correctness is just  a surface mask. Wait for the next relatively small Indian mishap to be pounced upon by these disaster news vultures.

It is our tragedy as programmed mimic men that we think the same, and are eager for visas to the land of the angels that love us so bashingly.

Serendipity – How the Late Osho and Manasataramgini think alike :-)

There was a cat who became all-knowing. She became famous among cats – so much so that she came to be looked upon as a tirthankara. The reason for her becoming all-knowing was that she found a way of sneaking into the library. She knew everything about this library. By everything I mean the means of entry to  and exit from the library, which set of books was most comfortable to snuggle against, which books gave warmth in the winter and which were cool in the summer, et cetera.

So the word went around among  the cats that if anybody wanted any knowledge about the library, the all-knowing cat could provide the answer. Naturally, there was no doubt about such a one who knew everything about the library being omniscient. This cat even had followers. But the fact remained that she knew nothing. All that she knew about  books was whether she could sit behind them comfortably, which books had cloth binding, which were warm, which were not etc. She had not the least idea of what was inside the book. How could a cat know what is inside a book?

There are such all-knowing cats among men too, who know how to shield themselves with books.

Osho – Kundalini Yoga

Is that some coincidence, or what? I’m salivating,  trying to guess the identity of the cat-among-men. Any pointers?

The elephant in the room – problem with defenders of Hinduism

As I went through Dr. Elst’s analysis of the Hindu defeat in the California Textbook controversy, I found myself welcoming the bitter medicine, while wondering if defenders of traditional Hindu POV can come out of the denial of reality.

The major problem is ignorance of own tradition, and unwillingness to correct this defect.  This problem is compounded by the sophistication of what is there to learn. It is akin to right away trying Quantum Physics, Chomskian Deep Structure Linguistics, and Genetics – without knowing basic building blocks of science, maths, theorems, proofs and so on. For example, most of us (English Medium Educated) do not know Sanskrit. Therefore we cannot read and understand sources, in the original. We depend on translations. The next wrinkle is the fact of Vedic Sanskrit, which is quite different from the Sanskrit that gets taught to normal students. So Vedic Sanskrit needs to be mastered! Already the mountain has become too big to trek.

An antipathy-filled Wendy Doniger, a Michael Witzel or their armies of followers work on mastering these things. And they occupy academic positions of power. Their interpretation of sources become the received truth where it matters. Their primary tool for this is philology and hostile or vulgar interpretation. Risa Lila is one such example of a battle lost, or at least not won. “Our side” does have a Srikanth Talageri, a Rajiv Malhotra, a Koenraad Elst, a Nicholas Kazanas, a Subhash Kak and so on, but they do not have comparable respect and influence where it matters. We also have plenty of self-goal scorers, who might be called amateurs in the game.

So when discussing AIT among ourselves, we almost always assume that it has been accepted universally as false. AIT continues to enjoy widespread acceptance in the ivory towers. We compound the problem by assuming that OIT has won! This is denial of reality. This denial syndrome has also manifested itself in the CAF case.

The primary philological problem is the deliberate ambiguity of sources. Look at the sophistication of semantic encodings in Sanskrit. We are looking at The Sun and The Moon! But we have cataract, and can’t really figure out their shapes. It is the multiple-semantics part that leads us astray and gives a handle to the hostile interpreters. Philology is the main weapon used by the Goliath called White Indology. In spite of contrary evidence from Genetics, Archaeology, Hydronomy, and satellite imagery of lost rivers, White Indology marches on with the same denigratory interpretations as before. The biggest problem is that the hostiles hold ideological and academic power, unlike in the case of Sinology, Jewish Studies, Christian or Islamic studies. This is what makes these repeated defeats likely.

A comprehensive  and brief argument against the AIT was given by Rajeev Chandran a long time ago, but it is not widely disseminated.

1. There is no archaeological attestation of aryan invasion/migration in spite of more than a hundred years of archaeological effort.
2. There is no traditional memory or mention of aryan invasion/migration/intrusion in any of all the diverse historical traditions of India.
3. There is no genetic trace of foreigners to attest to such a historical mixing. If at all Indian genotypes not only closer to each other but substantially more diverse and much older than European or middle eastern genotypes – therefore suggesting a reverse migration. After Africa the most ancient and diverse population happens to be that of India. In essence most other non-African people descended from prehistoric Indians.
4. Philology is a tool of uncertain provenance and its conclusions are highly debatable. Aryan invasion/migration are hypothesis emerging basically from philology – hence open to debate.
5. Development of historical theories on ancient India through more accurate means (archaeology & traditional history) rather than philology points to the indegenity and antiquity of Indians.
6. Self references in many ancient Indian texts points to indegenity of Indians in a time-scale far older than those proposed by Aryan Invasion theory.
7. In ancient Indian texts Arya means ‘noble of conduct and character’ rather than a race. If the oldest texts negate Aryan being a race – the idea of Aryan being a race of people can be traced to the rise of British imperialism and German nationalism – both historically discredited and defunct ideologies.
8. Geology (mapping of the old Saraswati), archeo-metallurgy (iron working in ancient india), archeo-agriculture (maize, rice farming) etc points to a far greater antiquity of ancient Indians (which does not agree with Aryan Invasion Theory).
9. Archeo-astronomy, archeo-mathematics, hydronomy (river names) seem to corraborate ancient indian texts on thier antiquity and claims of indigenity.
10. Study of ancient Indian history has been held hostage to various extraneous constraints notably – euro-centricism, communism, various kinds of religious and regional chauvinism, and hence must be discarded

The banality of the great celebrities

Shallow woman is chitchatting, I mean interviewing Sir Salanaam Rushwhere. Deepa Mayo is also chitting & chatting with them. (Aside: can I call it an interPhew!). Today’s episode the regular pogrom  The Suck Stops Nowhere.

Stimulating and enlightening discussion.

Shallow Woman(SW) : What’s your ideè (fixè) of India ?

Sir Salanaam Rushwhere(SR): Oh, you know, its not the same country as in “Midday meals’ Children”. Actually, its changed, I regret the bakwas I have to spout. You know this IOI business, Khilnani stole it and has made a career writing tomes about HIS Idea of India, this artificial nation. He never sent me an IOU on it.

SW: Why is the kitaab darker than the phillum? Lets see it ass-backwards – the phillum fair & lovelier than the pustak?

Sir SR: I am just more pissymystic than Mayo here, and that’s sayin’ a lot, heh heh.

SW: Do you still call your city Bombay? With the frigging elements re-christening it, do we liberal fringe elements enjoy the idea of Mum-Bai?  Those Bullies, Bums, Blistering Barnacles, Thundering Typhoons and Troglodytes.

Sir SR: Yes yes, the name reclaiming sister-sleepers haven’t changed in the last 60 yrs. Mum-Bai is a lot like Paaniwali Bai, and her secret names are Mumba Devi and  Mookambika. Always Mum, you know. As our PM Maun Mohan Singh says, she has the undying spirit to endure any number of train blasts, crowds and North Indians. No, my Bombay was there since the Beginning of Time, and Bombay it will be until the End Of.

SW: And Ms Mayo, when did your relationship with India change?

DM: Well, it was when they prevented my Other film “Ditch Water” from taking samples of it from India. Time was, when India allowed my spiritual Mother to travel all over India for her Drain Inspector’s Report.  Ah, those were the days, my friend! The father of the nation did not like it. I knew that NRIs would always drink bottled Bisleri water, but why not drink mine too? And I don’t like it when they call me an NRI.  What do I have to do to prove that I am an Indian, drink my own water? I am not Morarji Desai. As a child I was inspired by the golden song in the phillum Baiju Bawra where Rafi Saab cries “Ab tho Neer Bahaale”.  The Bhagwan in Stone actually shed water from his eyes, for God’s sake!  Maine bhi tab wohi kiya, neeche se. ab wohi kar raha hoon, phillum banaane se.

You see, my film  is actually about the pure-skinned heroine, who happens to be a Banarasi child widow. Other skins in that region turn dark brown, but she remains white. They are all Maili, just like the Ganga, but only on the surface, shallow woman!  Raj Kapoor always draped that colour around his heroines, hiding all the other 7 colours.  He wanted us to see and touch what was beneath the skin. Now Sir Salanaam may not drool over Zeenie Baby in RK movies, but a “Fire” Shabana, Draupadi or Sita would, provided they were gay enough. They are all victims of a society that the Whites left too early. Only we, the residues of the whites, know how to rescue the browns from brownness.  But they Other me, just because I live in Canada and make flying visits to my birth mother.

SW: And what does the Other child, Shiva, symbolise?

Sir SR: Hate speech, my dear, just like Varun Gandhi’s. Contrast this with the family that gets together in the end. Mary the central character, Saleem the Anarkali, Akbar, and Anthony without anyone named Amar. Like Joseph Anton, they are all well-adopted, if not well-healed. Dysfunctional like the modern American family, yet getting together for the sake of the IOI. Minorities, minorities, minorities!

SW: What was your favourite moment in the book. To me, it was the immortal “no culture that has the same name for yesterday and tomorrow can be said to have a firm grip on time”.

Sir SR: Yes yes, how my lovely nation time travels, past sliding into the present, I mean, get a grip, Bhaiyyas and bhanchods! Cast out Shiva, the Mahakal! He belongs on the streets!

Me: There are unknown knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns and well-known ignoramuses.

You know, there are some rather precise divisions of time in the Hindu Time Scale? It ranges from Paramāṇu (17 microseconds) to Mahā-Manvantara (311 million years). Mind, it includes the secularist time-scale as well (1947 – Present), how’s that for inclusiveness? Here’s a picture to gaze at.

Unit	Value(secs)	Comment
Truti	10-7
Renu	10-5
Lava	10-3
Leekshaka	10-1
Ksana	~1
Prāna	4
Vighati	24	6 Prānas
Ghati	103	60 vighatis
Muhurta	1440	2 Ghatis
Ahorātram	13200	30 Muhurtas

Interested in the details? See here.

It is usually switch-off kaala when The Suck Starts There, but today it was appalling and funny at the same samay. Good night, buck-suckers!

The new British historical revisionism

The ‘idea of India’ was a European not a local invention, as the name itself makes clear. No such term, or equivalent, as ‘India’ existed in any indigenous language. A Greek coinage, taken from the Indus river, it was so foreign to the subcontinent that as late as the 16th century, Europeans could define Indians simply as ‘the natives of all unknown countries’ and use it to describe the inhabitants of the Americas.\

Could it be because India is an English word ? It does seem to your humble self that until “Indian” languages could acquire this idea, they would struggle to complete the phrase Idea of India. This underdoggest of all cultures has been slowly overcoming its dim-wit handicap, thanks to the all-knowing scholars and master definers that the British Raj still emanates.

Gange cha Yamune chaiva  Godavari Saraswathi,

Narmada Sindhu Kaveri  Jale asmin sannidhim kuru

What does this hymn mean? Where does it come from? How old is it? A 64-karod rupee question, equal to a Bofors scam 🙂

Problems. (please have your tongue-in-cheek when some of these terms are used by an English educated Bhaiyya).

1. It does not mean much, coming from a dead language(pdf) . However, a difficult linguistic-archaeology-level translation effort can be made.  “Hail! O ye Ganges, Jamuna, Godavari, Sarasvati, Narmada, Sindhu and Kaveri, come and approach these waters.”
2. Indians (unlike the north american red indians) have difficulty recollecting it, understanding it or resonating to it.  Bharatheeyas may be somewhat better. However, they do not matter, being remnants of a dead people, somewhat like Tasmanians, Yukis  and Herero (pdf) people.
3. Are a refuse-of-the-dead people allowed to make up these hymns?

Aa sindho: sinduparyantham yasya bhaaratha bhoomikaa maathru bhoo: pithru
bhoo (punya) schaiva sa vai Hindu iti smruthaa:

whomsoever, is considering the land between the sapta sindu ( Indus valley river) upto Indian ocean as the motherland/ fatherland and holy land, is known as Hindu. This land is known as Hindustanam which is defined as
follows:

Himaalayam samaarabhya yaavath hindu sarovaram tham deva nirmitham desam hindustaanam prachakshate.

The land created by god himself and which is lying between Himalayas
Indian ocean is known as Hindustanam .

Liberal patronizers should allow it, it is as politically correct as a Pukka Saahib.

What is this nonsense about geographical, political, cultural and Dharmic unity? About the continuum in history?  Sorry, Perry Anderson (PA) Saahib will not allow it. Not based on the revered  Westphalian model. Let’s not have more of such nonsense. As Humpty Dumpty says – “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less”.

I understand that the North-East was never a part of “India”. I am enlightened now. The Mahabharata (MBH) misled me earlier, with fairy tales like Chitrangada , Naga kingdoms and Uloopi.

Sorry again, PA Saahib says that  it is ridiculous that

Mahabharata could be invoked as proof that the North-East Frontier Agency had been part of Mother India from time immemorial, rather as if the Nibelungenlied were to clinch German diplomatic claims to Morocco. Such notions have not gone away. The facts gainsay them.

Utter ignorance is my problem. What is this Nibelungenlied ? Even educated Indians don’t know it. It is as unknown to us dimwits as Peccavi. (The mists lift slowly though. It seems this a myth written in middle high german.) Oh, the paisa drops – he means that MBH is as unreliable as Nibung-watcha-ma-callit.

Still un-Westphalian, I gamely want to say that “North-East Frontier Agency” is his precise new term, while I am happy to rename it as  ishaanya Bhaaratam and thus grab it. Sigh, I see you shaking your head. Is it speculative to say  that Burma etymologically comes from Brahma Desham? Please don’t shake your head, I get the no-no signal. How about the clear asymmetry in the Germany-Morocco relation (separate continents) and the Bharatam – ishaanya Bharatam  relation (same subcontinent) ? Sorry again, we can’t forget Humpty Dumpty’s criteria, can we?

I am tired of learning this heavy-burden white man’s concept – The Idea of India. Let me move on.

Foreign conquerors were no novelty in the subcontinent, whose northern plains had known successive waves of invaders from the tenth century onwards. For many, the British were not necessarily more alien than previous rulers. The latest invaders would, of course, always require their own soldiers too. But if the British could gain and keep a firm grip on such a vast landmass, it was because they could count on its multiple fragmentations – ethnic, linguistic, dynastic, social, confessional.

In other words, it is fait accompli that matters. Invaders are ok. Aryans invaded Dravidians too, and Dravidians invaded Mundas. Invasion is the continuum. See, the British gave us railways, roads, urbanity, sewage systems,  telegraph, cutlery, table manners and above all, English. Why don’t we let them off the hook?

Let us move on. Saar, saar, gora lefty master above says that Gandhi basically saturated the freedom movement with Hindu-ness. His congress party had 97% hindus.  There was no secularity (new term for me), it was all Nehru’s fantasy. What else could un-religious, urbane, down-the-hatch whiskey secularist Jinnah do, but

1. raise the separatist Muslim flag ,
2. wait for the opportunity called the Quit India movement,
3. offer his Muslim league support to the British war effort and thus fill his vote banks with more Muslim separatists?
4. call for direct action day, “India divided or India destroyed” etc, when push cameto shove?

Very understandable. This cranky faddist called Gandhi with his suspect celibacy experiments, loin-cloth in Buckingham palace, fasting, enema, goat’s milk etc is such a hindu saturationist.  How such an inferior intellect in contrast to position paper writer Dr. Ambedkar, still gets to win the Poona pact is beyond reason. It has to be the Asiatic backwardness of the masses, as Karl Marx says.

Look how brilliantly the enlightened gora teacher deconstructs this so-called Mahatma for us.

1. Gandhi called of the Satyagraha after Chauri Chaura because violence had been perpetrated by his followers. Yet he was a volunteer for the Boer war, the Zulu crushing, the inter-imperialist slaughter in WWI and so on. So he was not always the apostle of non-violence.
2. He would tell compatriots: ‘We have to take the risk of violence to shake off the great calamity of slavery.’ And a few months later: ‘Supposing a non-violent struggle has been started at my behest and later on there is an outbreak of violence, I will put up with that too, because it is God who is inspiring me and things will shape as He wills. If He wants to destroy the world through violence using me as His instrument, how can I prevent it?’
3. He was not a hypocrite when he did all this, but always thought of himself as a semi-divine vehicle escaping the trammels of human logic and reason. How can a million-strong nation follow him. Beyond reason, right? Asiatic backwardness.
4.  Hind Swaraj, its battery of archaisms a stumbling-block to those who pointed out that he was using railways and doctors and not actually rejecting schools, he defended to the end, writing in 1945 that he still stood by its system of government. … Throughout his career in India, he claimed both to rise above consistency – growing ‘from truth to truth’.

We Indian dimwits get the point. He should have played by the rules of European reason  and ideological frameworks, not this Asiatic voodoo. He cannot possibly be inventing a new grammar of mass communication, can he?  Especially now that we are adequately educated, and have thoroughly internalized what left, right and centre are supposed to be. How could ever have been such Luddites, waxing about the vedas, sanatana dharma, the yamas and the niyamas of Patanjali, asses that our ancestors were?

So Satyagraha did not avoid checkmate by the Raj. At the round table conference he is confronted by demands for separate sikh, muslim and untouchable electorates. He saw off the Ambedkar challenge through emotional blackmail, but others were a different kettle of meat-eaters. Thank Heavens for Jinnah.

When I can get more educated about orientalism, I will try to see if this gora saahib from the left has in-the-box thinking limitations, and (dare I say it) help him to rise above it.

Update: A scholarly rebuttal by Ananya Vajpeyi. Money quote – “…an only half-embarrassed defence of British imperialism and its century of colonial rule on the Indian subcontinent”. I wish she could flush him out even more.