“… in the Arab culture, the shoe is considered an insult…” oh, schadenfreude.

Subrahmanyam deals …

Even the broad intellectual grouping known as Subaltern Studies hasn’t taken domestic work into account, save for the occasional moment when a conversation with a servant provides the researcher with an anecdote or factoid to motivate an essay on some profound question or other.

There are lots of nice bits in that piece. Also Pankaj Mishra finds it necessary to defend Adiga (but manages to do a piss-poor job – SS did not call Siegel an “Indian” but an “Indologist”. A mis-reading that Lee Siegel will thoroughly enjoy). [via H-ASIA]

What great news! The Library of Congress’ 2008 Kluge Prize has been given to historians Romila Thapar and Peter Brown.

I am huge admirer of these fine historians. In addition to her scholarship on antiquity and medieval Indian history, Thapar is the pre-eminent public intellectual with a staunch commitment to a secular India. Her work leading up to, and after, the 1992 Babri Masjid riots is one of the clearest acts of public bravery by a historian. Peter Brown’s lucid prose has often been gushed up at CM. So Awesome!

There are better profiles at the LoC site.

I wish Angelina Jolie would just stay at that charpai and solve all our problems, with her ballpoint pen.

In related news, CM was nominated for Best South Asian Blog at Brass Crescent Awards. Go look see at the best of Muslim-themed dishes the blog kitchen has to offer. I picked up a number of new reads.

I am also co-judging the annual Cliopatria Awards, for best in history. More on that, in a month or so.

Initial word makes it that Lashkar-e Tayiba, who have previously been suspects in the Oct. 2005 Delhi serial blasts and the July 2006 train blasts, is responsible for this atrocity.

Damn them.

A riff on the exile theme …

I wonder if this announcement means that the General is moving to a nice Chicago suburb? (thx to scott.)

This will surely be regarded as the best story of 2008 (at least, I will champion it):

First, Dawn

Mustafa Kamal second best mayor in the world

KARACHI, Nov 9: The Foreign Policy magazine of the United States has chosen Karachi Nazim Syed Mustafa Kamal as the second among the best three mayors in the world for 2008.

Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit and Chongqing Mayor Wang Hongju were the other two mayors of the moment, a press release issued by the Karachi City District Government said.

The magazine said: No city globalises on its own, but with shrewd investments and smart urban planning, a mayor can help turn a regional player into a global powerhouse. Here’s how three of the worlds top mayors are climbing the ladder.

…

Mr Kamal, however, gives all credit for this feat to his party leader Altaf Hussain who, he says, selected the representatives from lower and middle classes that represent 98 per cent of the country’s population.

In a statement, he said it was also the recognition of the philosophy of the MQM and the 30-year struggle of its leader.

And, here is the reveal, from Foreign Policy:

At issue is a sidebar from FP’s recent Global Cities Index that names Kamal, Berlin’s Klaus Wowereit, and Chongqing’s Wang Hongju as “mayors of the moment” who have found innovative ways to globalize their cities. The mayors are not ranked, nor are we implying that they are objectively “better” than any other mayors, but that didn’t stop the Karachi city government from issuing a press release on its Web site (they’ve changed the text since being contacted by FP) congratulating Kamal for being the No. 2 mayor in the world. For the record, the three names are not listed in any particular order.

via Teeth Maestro.

Our long national nightmare of our long national nightmare of peace And prosperity is finally over. Well, maybe.

McCain must pick up Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Indiana, Montana, Ohio, North Carolina, sez Nate Silver. Nate Silver knows his shit.

A great Chicagoan is no more.

My one story about Studs Terkel involves the blues and Romila Thapar – as she told us, about being hosted by Studs in the mid 60s in Chicago and being introduced to blues and jazz at the Checkerboard Lounge. So, here is Studs:

Despite all the above misadventures, I love the U of C Law School and treasure those three years of attendance. Allow me to explain.Never having drive an automobile, I was a street car student, traveling from the near North Side to Hyde Park. It involved three trolleys. One point of transfer was in the black belt, known as Bronzeville. It was there while waiting that I heard recorded music – blues songs – blaring out of the gallimaufry stores; everything second-hand was for sale. Even used phonograph records. I fell deeply in love and bought them by the score; a nickel or a dime each. It may explain why I was so often late for class.

So it was that I came to listen and learn from some of my most memorable mentors; Big Dill Broonzy [sic]; Memphis Slim; Tampa Red; Memphis Minnie; Roosevelt Sykes; the Honey Dripper; and even from Peatie Wheatstraw, the Devil’s Son-In-Law.

update: Ebert remembers…

update 2: Studs on Studs and the University of Chicago…

and, dare I say, two early faves:

via Dawn, Oct 14, 2008:

LAHORE, Oct 14: Ulema of all major schools of thought have declared suicide attacks ‘haram’.

“It is a unanimous decree of the ulema that suicide attacks in Pakistan are haram and illegitimate. But it seems as if the government is covertly backing these attacks so that patriotic citizens may not assemble and launch a mass drive for the defence of the country,” said a joint declaration released to the media after a meeting held here on Tuesday.

It endorsed a decree earlier issued by religious scholars in Karachi. It alleged that US agenda was being pursued under the cover of terror acts.

The meeting called for convening an all-party conference, including representatives of parties outside parliament, for devising a joint strategy to steer the country out of the quagmire.

It called upon ulema across the country to condemn the US policies in their sermons on Friday and prepare the people for a mass movement.

It pledged to send a delegation of ulema to Bajaur and Swat for bringing the ‘facts’ to light.

The ulema called upon the nation not to leave the survival of the country to the rulers and parliament alone and to play a role in this regard.

It asked the government to take along ulema and other notables in every area in efforts for apprehending criminals, anti-state elements and foreign agents.

It also urged all Muslim countries to de-link their currencies from the US dollar and float their own common currency.

The meeting was attended by Jamia Naeemia’s Dr Sarfaraz Naeemi, Jamaat ud-Dawa amir Prof Mohammad Saeed, Jamaat-i Islami’s Dr Farid Piracha, Muttahida Ulema Council’s Maulana Abdur Rauf Malik, Jamiat Ittehad ul-Ulema’s Maulana Abdul Malik, Shariat Council’s Maulana Zahidur Rashdi, Syed Niaz Husain Naqvi, Mufti Ghulam Sarwar Qadri, Saleemullah Khan, Hafiz Akif Saeed, Allama Zubair Ahmad Zaheer, Jamia Ashrafia’s Maulana Fazlur Reheem Ashrafi and Jamia Manzoorul Islam’s Pir Saifullah Khalid.

“I was in Australia and New York and here in England, I was at Oxford for a few years. At least two of those places were very egalitarian, and this was Sydney and New York and when I came back I had to a large extent forgotten what it had been to be well off in India,” he told The Australian Online.

I had no embarrassment about doing many things for myself that would (normally) be done by servants. I think I looked at people in a different way and I am not claiming to be non-middle class back in India but I am conscious of the fact that there are people around me who are servants and I am curious of what they are like.”

Oh that India, only when you leave it, will you learn to endure it. And write about its contradictions. What a fate.

Thank Allah for egalitarian Oxford.

[via Sean @ 538.com, image by Brett.]

via moacir…West Plains, Mo represent!. Oh, do read the comments. Sigh.

related:Yes!.

What is with conservatives and the word ‘pakistan’? First, there was that insane Christopher Hitchens letter juju. And now comes the cry that Pock-i-stahn is so not the Amrikan pronunciation. 

As a native speaker of Urdu, let me help you out: Pay-Armi-stan, Palin-s-TAN, Pick-a-side-an, Powpow-sometan.

In any case, lets learn how to pronounce Obama’s name, properly.

I am going to continue to pimp Big Picture.

Though, honestly, this time around, I did have a slight twinge of “India Essentialized”. What do I know, though.

First, a profile of Montgomery McFate, the anthropologist who launched the Human Terrain Program, by Noah Shachtman. Michael Bhatia, who died in Afghanistan in May, was one of the casualties of the HTP.

Next, via Daku come some linkage:
– Larki pay hath utatha hay, madarchod! – I cannot even quantify the laugh/cringe ratio of that clip.
– Skatesitan:Afghanistan’s first dedicated skateboarding school.

& switching gears:

Upinder Singh, Changing interpretations of early Indian history. I hadn’t seen this – and I will read it soon. However, a sentence like, “the 18th and 19th centuries were dominated by the writings of scholars, referred to as Orientalists or Indologists” can only be plausible, if English were the sole language of India during those afore-mentioned centuries. They weren’t. It isn’t. The rest has some good points.

Since, this is an earlier essay, I googled for her book, A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century (2008). Yes, it is out. And yes, Irfan Habib has some issues, in his review, History Is One Blind Turn From Mohenjo Daro, Outlook, India 09/08/2008:

This work, issued by a leading Western publisher of textbooks, marks a landmark of sorts: its release has been accompanied by perhaps the most vigorous PR campaign on behalf of any textbook on history in India. The first two pages of the volume contain laudatory opinions from 17 scholars, ten of which appear on the back cover. Of these ten, as many as eight are from the pens of scholars holding posts in foreign universities. These authoritative experts have deemed the work to be “exciting”, a “long-overdue introduction”, giving us a history that “all groups of Indian people can identify with” (presumably those, at any rate, who can afford to fork out Rs 3,500), and a book destined to “supersede previous surveys of ancient Indian history”.

and,

Rather surprisingly, Islam, despite its widespread implantation in the Indus basin from the early eighth century onwards, and the arrival of Sufism, with Hujwiri’s text on it composed in Lahore in the 11th century, is not covered in her detailed account of the religious scene in the early medieval period, except for a seven-line paragraph on p604. The flourishing urban economy of Sind, with Mansura as a great archaeological site, is also overlooked; so also the Arab accounts of India of the 10th century, and the transmission of Indian learning to the classic Islamic world. This is all the more strange, when we find her recording in her preface an unfulfilled ambition to go on further and rather illogically include the Delhi Sultanate also in her account of the early medieval period.

Via e. comes this brilliance.

And I don’t use the word brilliant, that casually, you know. Actually, I do.