Chapati Mystery » optical character recognition

Savage Mules

Steve Marlowe — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 19:38:00 +0000

Dennis Perrin, whether he knows it or not, is in contention with Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi in a contest of nuclear indignance–which of the two will assume the mantle of America’s clear-thinking, hyper-independent conscience, left unshouldered since Hunter S. Thompson’s slide into obscurity, and lamentable demise?

Taibbi has the lead. He occupies a chair close to Thompson’s vacant National Affairs Desk, is a fantastic writer, and seems to get off on speaking truth to, and about, whatever power has the misfortune of catching his gaze. His recent fencing match with Erica Jong will suffice as Exhibit A. Jong meant to teach the young malcontent a lesson about what can, and cannot, be said; in response, Tiabbi handed her a piece of her own considerable ass. Consider, also, Taibbi’s furious wood-shedding of The National Review’s Byron York, who, following an exchange on the nature of credit-default swap, would do well to never show his smug face in public, or open his mouth in public discourse, again.

Perrin has numerous disadvantages in his quest for a broader audience and the recognition he deserves. His fans must seek out dennisperrin.blogspot.com. Before dennisperrin.com, he blogged under the title Red State Son. Unlike Taibbi, who sits before the camera on Real Time with Bill Maher, Perrin wrote Maher’s jokes. Perrin seems to be more comfortable, at least in his role as political commentator, behind a computer-monitor. Perrin’s politics, while not explicit–there may not be a good label for them, actually–are a blend of disgust, anarcho-syndicalism, and an absurd comedic sensibility.

One envisions him in a bowler hat, at the turn of the 20th century, gleefully tossing little round, black, crackling-fused bombs at industrialists’ motorcades. He may not be sure what follows the revolution, but he’s willing to give it a chance.

Savage Mules, Perrin’s 2008 catalogue of Democratic party misdeeds, fuck-ups and rank hypocrisy, deserves a broad audience, and when that audience comes to the book, Perrin will win the fans he needs to be competitive with Tiabbi.

Mules is an intensely personal, often jarring history of Perrin’s relationship to the narrative driving the Democratic party. It’s a story Perrin doesn’t buy, even though accident & circumstance often puts him among those who do.

“I’ve witnessed this up-close and point-blank for much of my adult life. To many of them, the Democrats are a flawed but inherently decent party whose humane outlook is forever compromised by Republican slander and personal insecurity. Even critical liberal bloggers and columnists hand the Dems a pass on most issues simply because they believe that the mules will eventually Get It Right, if only they can move past conservative lies and intimidation tactics.”

Carter, Jackson, the Democratic Mascot itself, Roosevelt, Truman, MacArthur, Kennedy, Johnson, Clinton, Humphrey, Nader-Haters, and The Yearly Kos all queue for a clubbing as Perrin, one-by-one, example-by-example, deconstructs the myths with which we surround supposedly well-meaning democrats.

Most of Perrin’s complaints have bases in the bloody preservation of American Imperial establishment and expansion, which, by Perrin’s reckoning, can be shown first at home with Jackson’s genocidal Trail of Tears, and continues unabated, abroad. Perrin’s critique echoes Chomsky’s common-sensical approach to realpolitik: the assumption that America should husband the world’s resources for its benefit, and intervene to protect its “interests” when necessary or expedient, offends Perrin’s radically egalitarian ethos. Further, the notion dwells as monstrously and demonstrably in the heads of mules as it does in pachyderms.

It’s an admirable stance, and one that forces the reader to take a choice–wake up and do something about the Orwellian mad-elephant, or continue in slumber while Empire thrives. It will be a shockingly difficult choice for most readers, and one that most are wholly unprepared to consider. The assumption that America is good, and its Democrats are good stewards, and that American use of force is not just necessary, but an unqualified good, are so taken for granted that they might as well be scrimshawed in ivory.

And this is where Perrin distinguishes himself. Perrin does not come from a beat–he is a free agent, a gunslinger, whose loneliness in the wilderness permits him to take his critique a step further than he might, were he wed to a masthead. He does not report on the process, nor does he take its permanence, or its value, as givens that needn’t be proved by argument. Perrin’s exchange with Max Blumenthal’s aunt, at the YearlyKos gives an illustration:

“Do you like Hillary?” She asked.
“No, not really.”
“Why not?”
“It’s probably best not to go into it here.” I didn’t want to start a conversation about how much I dislike the Dems with someone from the Blumenthal clan, especially right before I was due to speak.
“Well, who do you like?”
“Actually, I’d like to see another system.”
“Well, that’s not gonna happen.”
Not with people like you in the way, I thought to myself.

Perrin’s descriptions of his confusion, humility and ambivalence following September 11th come off as particularly endearing, and provide a nice literary counterbalance to the overall tone of the book, which, despite its being earned, can seem unrelenting, like the rare car alarm that has actually been set off by a thief.

The contest between Taibbi and Perrin–of which neither likely has intention nor knowledge–may take years to resolve, if ever. But so long as Perrin continues roasting sacred animals, and literally kicking high-rolling apparatchiks’ asses, he should count himself, and we also should count him, among our treasures. A rare thing in these times, truth. And a rarer thing is one who will tell it, as he sees it, and challenge those who disbelieve to prove him wrong.

Savage Mules is published by Verso Press. 118 pages.

Sunday Reading for Hi Ohs

sepoy — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 21:30:54 +0000

I will have some pictures up tomorrow of Ohio, including the fivethirtyeight.com road crew in situ, on the road. I can report that nearly every single ad I have seen on tv from McCain has been a negative ad – including some delectably served hate from NRA (check out gunbanobama.com, if you must). And everything I saw from Obama has been on the issue. Weird, no? And yet, Cookie Roberts can fold her hands and sanctimoniously declare that both sides have been negative. I hate pun-dits.

India’s Arjun is what happens when Aladdin grows up (in animation terms). Here is a preview.
Tariq Ali’s newest gets reviewed by Muhammad Hanif. He likes it.
Nadeem Aslam’s latest, The Wasted Vigil, is reviewed by Lorraine Adams. A lot of people liked his earlier novel, but I couldn’t get into his prose. Doesn’t look-it that it has improved an awful lot.
Chetan Bhagat is the John Grisham of India. Or something.
Zizek’s political economy needs wider reading.
The novel on Aisha is reportedly published.
Lastly, History done right.

DFW, RIP

sepoy — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 02:02:56 +0000

David Foster Wallace is gone. Deeply shocked. And saddened. Just crushingly sad.

See him on Charlie Rose interview from 1997.

DFW: You confront your own vanity when you think about going on TV. So I’m — no apologies, but just — that’s an explanation. The — the footnotes in the — there’s a way that — there’s a way, it seems to me, that reality’s fractured right now, at least the reality that I live in. And the difficulty about writing one of those, writing about that reality, is that text is very linear and it’s very unified and you — I, anyway, am constantly on the lookout for ways to fracture the text that aren’t totally disoriented. I mean, you can — you know, you can take the lines and jumble them up and that’s nicely fractured, but nobody — nobody’s going to read it, right? So you’ve got — there’s got to be some interplay between how difficult you make it for the reader and how seductive it is for the reader so the reader’s willing to do it. The end notes were, for me, a useful compromise, although there were a lot more when I delivered the manuscript. And one of the things that the editor did for me was had me pare the end notes down to really the absolutely essential. (@18:53)

Also, this interview with Caleb Crain, on Everything and More: A Compact History of ∏.

Kakutani Appraises. It has been a rainy day.

Sunday Reading for Speed Racers

sepoy — Mon, 19 May 2008 02:56:32 +0000

I watched Iron Man a few weeks ago in Copenhagen. It is a pretty boring movie – except for fans of Robert Downey Jr. – but it is worth watching for professional reasons alone. Let me explain, briefly. The movie that most brilliantly captured the particular brand of American Orientalism was 1994′s True Lies. Can anyone doubt the inspiration of Crimson Jihad? The Middle Eastern terrorists have the perfect mixture of rage, muscles and the technical ineptitude (By technical, I mean both mechanical skills as well as planning and execution skills) that defines America’s particular Other. I mean, seriously, the camcorder scene is pure genius. Now, since those heady days of True Lies, we have had some changes. 24, when it emerged in November 2001, went with eastern European bad guys. Reality being what it is. It wasn’t until 24′s season 6, in 2007, that the True Lies storyline finally re-entered popular American culture. In fact, the fear of nuclear weapon was fulfilled. My one complaint about season 6 was that when, post 2001, they finally went back to the days of True Lies – they denied these terrorists the “mastermind” status.¹ The capacity to think and plan and invent – ie, Reason – is an Enlightenment lag, after all. Iron Man continues the good work of 24, so that even as there is linguistic diversity in these cave dwellers in Afghanistan², they remain bumbling, sniveling and completely helpless in the face of American technical super-knowledge.

In related news, the Wachowski Brothers have finally matched the joy and exhilaration of 1999′s The Matrix in Speed Racer – a classic. Unlike the universally acclaimed Iron Man, Speed Racer has received harsh drubbing by the critics. Watch them eat crow in the coming years.

I have travelled a lot recently and also read a lot of articles³. Among them, J. Y. Wong’s British Annexation of Sind in 1843: An Economic Perspective, 1997. I was reminded of it when CM friend Rohit Chopra, send in Salil Tripathi’s interview with Amitav Ghosh. Ghosh has a new book out tracing the role of Opium in the colonial economy. Ghosh’s claim – “Modern India was built on a drug” – seems provocative. I would push Ghosh back on his understanding of “Modern India” – sure Parsee and Sindhi merchants benefitted enormously from the Opium trade but does that really constitute a greater influx of money to “domestic” India? Still, I think that the native networks – of trade, knowledge, expertise etc. – deserve a lot more scrutiny than historians have given them. And even though I didn’t enjoy Ghosh’s last two books, I am looking forward to reading this one. Those interested in this issue will want to look at this chart from Wong: The Place of Opium in India’s Total Gross Revenue, 1821-58. Also see Sheela Reddy’s interview with Ghosh in Outlook India.
Google’s Friend Connect is worth a closer look for a number of reasons – some even academic. While we are on the subject of Google, this is a likely future around the world.
Joseph’s O’Neill’s Netherlands looks very promising.
Alberto Manguel edited one of the best compilations of fantastic literature ever – Black Water, which needs to be back in print. I didn’t know much about him, though, but his ruminations on his library is a fascinating document.

“There is a story by Julio Cortázar, “House Taken Over,” in which a brother and sister are forced to move from room to room as something unnamed occupies, inch by inch, their entire house, eventually forcing them out into the street. I foresee a day in which my books, like that anonymous invader, will complete their gradual conquest. I will then be banished to the garden, but knowing the way of books, I fear that even that seemingly safe place may not be entirely beyond my library’s hungry ambition.”

I love that story.
Finally, I leave you with Tony Judt. “Since 1989, he proposes, public intellectuals have mattered less and less. What’s more, it is still generally and complacently assumed that America “won” the cold war in that monumental year.”
———
1. The iranian/arab terrorists in season 6 were sweat-soaked, grungy, bumbling Arabs but mere henchmen
2. so close to reality!
3. Since Jan 1, 2008: Chicago – Baltimore, MD – Chicago – Greenville, SC – Chicago – Columbus, OH – Chicago – Boston, MA – Chicago – Toronto, QC – Chicago – Dubai, UAE – Karachi, PK – Lahore, PK – Dubai, UAE – Chicago – Amsterdam, NL – Berlin, DE – Copenhagen, DK – Berlin, DE – Chicago. And next week, off to SF. And yes, I was randomly selected for further screening at every single airport entry listed above. In these travels, I read Naipul’s A Bend in the River, Melville’s Moby Dick, Bellow’s Ravelstein, Jalal’s Partisans of Allah, Sharar’s Guzishta Lucknow, Beiner’sRemembering the Year of the French, Steedman’s Dust, Sebald’s The Emigrants, McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, Hanif’s A Case of Exploding Mangos, and a couple of issues of Wired and lots of NYers.

on the railway

sepoy — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 02:24:06 +0000

a long long time ago, a palmist told me that everything in my life will be hard, but i will achieve whatever it is that I wanted. just nothing will come easy. and then another person told me the same thing. No wonder I used to day dream about being a station manager of a railway station that was the last stop of a train into the himalayas.

that would be the easy life that i can never have.

in my day dream, i had two rooms in the railway station. and here, i do not embellish my young self. one room would be filled with books. the other room would be filled with mangos.

during that phase, i would often sneak out of the house at night. and hop trains. i know, it was dangerous and insane. but i was in thrall with the sound of the train as it rolls over the gap in the rail.
and the night.

i wanted that clanking silence.

if that makes any sense.

Sunday Reading for Chee Malabar

sepoy — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 01:14:19 +0000

The revelation was Chee Malabar. I know, and knew, that Yogi B will be global. They are way too talented and ferocious, live – to not force themselves into every iPod on the block. They are also incredibly genuine and warm. But, it is Chee, for whom I must evangelize. Though, I had heard a few tracks before, read a profile or two – I had never talked to him. And now I have all the zeal of the newly converted. Read these lyrics and discover it too – this is one poet, artist, writer and rapper who needs your support. In fact, all my gentle readers need to go buy the albums – himalayan project and oblique brown – and then seek him out when he comes to your neck of the woods or better still, invite him to your neck of the wood. Ok go.

First off, a sunday reading link to myself! Nathanael Robinson and Manan Ahmed had a conversation about memory and history and they put it up for you to read. It is not anything special (if only to see how badly I write when I write ‘academic’).
However, I can spot excellent writing from a mile away. Wendy Doniger’s essay in the LRB, The Land East of the Asterik is profound, funny, comprehensive and just an all around must-read on IE, PIE and horses. She really is a beacon of shining light in our dim academic world.
Also in the LRB is Zizek’s rather merde-y letter on China and Tibet. He seems to be ill-informed about a lot of things in there – including Fareed Zakaria’s brilliance.
A nice overview of Palestinian cinema by Nicholas Blincoe in the Guardian.
MQM must be stopped from terrorizing the citizens of Karachi.
Finally, it appears that bloggers and netizens can now link directly to Encyclopedia Brittanica. Let’s test it: al-Ḥajjāj al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf ath-Thaqafī

Below the fold, another number from Yogi B and Natchatra from Hiphopistan.

Monsoon Chutney

sepoy — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 20:41:58 +0000

CM reader JM sends in this note for all you gentle readers.

Hi! Hoping you Chapati Mystery readers can help me find a publisher for my first novel, Monsoon Chutney. It’s the multi-generational tale of an upper-caste Indian-American family. What’s really fresh about this work, I feel, is that each generation has its own unique struggles with identity and repression. The grandparents try to cope with the aftermath of Partition and finding their places in a newly-independent India, one full of religious and caste upheaval; the veranda where the two grandfathers sip whisky and bemoan certain passing traditions is the main setting of the first third of the novel. Their children marry and immigrate to America in the late Sixties, and attempt to reconcile their conservative upbringings with the demands of their new culture (n.b., I’ve left out the boring details of Dad’s professional life and just assumed that’s he’s done quite well as a urologist). The grandchildren, Raj and Sujata, are born in the U.S. They have to bridge the worlds of the two countries, mainly through wrestling with the expectations of their families while trying to establish their own identities as Indian-Americans. The struggle with patriarchy is a theme throughout: a tragic incident of incest proves to have unforeseen consequences, but to balance it out, there’s also a scene of tenderness and humor in which the parents deal with Sujata’s menarche (I’m sure female readers who are children of immigrants will smile wryly). The whole thing ends with an emotional scene in a house in La Jolla that unites the three generations. As the child of Indian immigrants who came to the U.S. in the Sixties, I was moved to write about these matters. And like you, I’m passionate about The God of Small Things and The Interpreter of Maladies, books that I hope Monsoon Chutney will one day join in the canon. Please let me know if you have any contacts in the publishing industry.

Those with leads, or those with The Inheritance of Loss (Amazon Key Phrases: deaf tailors, thun thun, chun chun, Father Booty, Uncle Potty, Cho Oyu) on their bookshelves, are urged to leave their helpful tips in the comments section.

I invite JM to submit a book proposal to CM for our own Chapati Mystery Presents … ® Series coming out soon.

Sunday Reading for Super Week

sepoy — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 19:06:37 +0000

“The worst uncontrolled reentry in history occurred in July 1979, when Skylab, America’s abandoned, 78-ton space station — which had long since run out of maneuvering fuel — came down earlier than planned, raining debris across the Australian outback.”

We would be playing out in Doha’s deserty fields and my mother, standing in the doorway, would keep an eye on the sky – hoping to pull her children in, if she saw Skylab. Our neighbor, Auntie something-or-the-other, was convinced it was her house that will be crushed by Skylab. They spent hours talking about it.

I convinced my mother that if Auntie something-or-the-other is right, we will be spared.

I have no idea why I suddenly remembered Skylab.

Pleasantries aside. Ayesha Siddiqa visited Chicago this weekend. She spoke at an event and then participated on a panel with two other participants. I will put up word and video of both as it becomes available. It was a delight hosting her and I look forward to her next book.

In the WSJ, Rebecca Dana’s Reinventing 24, tells us about the “Calcutta Cricket Club” and about Muslim actors denying participating in the 24verse. Crazy. I am willing to sign up.
Eric Weiner keeps the Orientalist traditions alive and well. Between him and Somini Sengupta, NYT is just a delight to read.
A couple of days ago Selig Harrison made all kinds of funny in the NYT – Drawn and Quartered. It is just terrible history and terrible analysis.
In the LRB, Eric Hobsbawn remembers the Weimar. Recently, I acquired Interesting Times and am reading it piecemeal. I just have one question: Why is it that our generation of historians cannot write that pretty?
In the WaPo, Nicholas Schmidle remembers Pakistan. Pakistan’s history is indeed suffering. As are, the historians.
Speaking of suffering historian, this question is just lame.
Professional sports is very interesting.

Remember, gentle readers, that on Feb 7th, Lapata will have her show at Bollyhood. I hereby request I-Reports from everyone who belongs to the CM world and goes there. All the I-Reports will be published right here, on CM. Your chance for greatness lies within your grasp.

Prison Lyrics

sepoy — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 23:58:16 +0000

In 1953, when Dast-i Saba (Wind’s Palm) was published, Faiz Ahmed Faiz had been in jail for almost two years. He would remain in jail for another two. He was charged with conspiracy to overthrow the nascent state of Liaqat Ali Khan and arrested in early March, 1951.

You can read about Faiz’s prison days and the composition of Dast-i Saba in Ted Genoways’ extremely readable, “Let Them Snuff Out the Moon”: Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Prison Lyrics in Dast-e Saba, [pdf] Journal of Urdu Studies, vol. 19, 2004. Genoways also offers a translation of the poem Nisar Mein Teri Galiyon Pay Aye Watan …. Mine, below, is rather quirky. You can also hear Faiz’s recitation of the poem.

نثار ميں تيري گليوں پے، اے وطن، کہ جهاں
چلي هے رسم کہ کوئي نہ سر اٹھا کے چلے
جو کوئي چاهنے والا طواف کو نکلے
نظر چُرا کے چلے، جسم و جاں بچا کے چلے

ہے اهل ِ دل کے ليے اب يہ نظم ِ بست و کشاد
کہ سنگ و خشت مقيد هيں اور سگ آزاد

بهت هيں ظلم کے دست ِ بهانه جو کے ليے
جو چند اهل ِ جنوں تيرے نام ليوا هيں
بنےهيں اهل ِ هوس مدعي بھي، منصف بھي
کسے وکيل کريں، کس سے منصفي چاهيں

مگر گزارنے والوں کے دن گزرتے هيں
تيرے فراق ميں يوں صبح و شام کرتے هيں

بُجها جو روزن ِ زنداں تو دل يہ سمجھا هے
کہ تيري مانگ ستاروں سے بھر گئي هو گي
چمک اٹھے ہيں ِسلاسل تو هم نے جانا هے
کہ اب سحر تيرے رخ پر بکھر گئي هو گي

غرض تصور ِ شام و سحر ميں جيتے ہيں
گرفت ِ سايہ ِ ديوار و در ميں جيتے ہيں

يونهي هميشه الجھتي رهي هے ظلم سے خلق
نہ ان کي رسم نئي هے، نہ اپني ريت نئي
يونهي هميشه کھلائے هيں هم نے آگ ميں پھول
نہ ان کي هار نئي هے، نہ اپني جيت نئي

اسي سبب سے فلک کا گلہ نهيں کرتے
تيرے فراق ميں هم دل برا نهيں کرتے

گر آج تجھ سے جدا هيں تو کل بهم هوں گے
يہ رات بھر کي جدائي تو کوئي بات نهيں
گر آج اوج پہ هيں طالع ِ رقيب تو کيا؟
يہ چار دن کي خدائي تو کوئي بات نهيں

جو تجھ سے عهد ِ وفا استوار رکھتے هيں
علاج ِ گردش ِ ليل و نهار رکھتے هيں

فيض احمد فيض، ۱۹۵۳، دستِ صبا

I give my life to your alleys, o nation, where
custom now dictates that one walk with head bowed,
when a lover leaves on a pilgrimage to love,
he must guard his eye, his body, his life.

Here, then, is the new order of freedom, O heart
Stones and bricks are in captivity and dogs run free.

Many are the pretenses for the oppressor’s hand
for the few who, in madness, take your name
the ones crazed by lust are both the accusers and the judges
who can we get to make our case? from whom can we seek justice?

Yet the days go by for those who can,
in your separation, turn dusk to dawn.

Now that the prison’s window has turned off
we know that stars must have decorated your hair.
Now that these chains are sparkling
we know that the day must has illuminated your face.

And so we live, imagining dawns and dusks
And so we live, gripped by the shadow of these prison walls

Such has always been, this struggle between oppressor and oppressed
Neither are their customs new, nor our paths new
Such has always been, that we grew flowers amid fire
Neither is their defeat new, nor is our triumph new.

Which is why, we don’t offer complains to the sky
Which is why, we don’t mourn being away from you

If today we are apart, tomorrow we will be together
this separation for a night is nothing,
If today the rival’s sun is high, so what?
this god for four days is nothing.

Those who maintain their oath of fidelity to you
they possess the cure for the circulation of night and day.

Faiz Ahmed Faiz, 1953, Wind’s Palm.

related: My other Faiz translations: Ahl-e Wafa, Hope, The Silent Ones, In Solidarity.

George MacDonald Fraser, 1925-2008

sepoy — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 05:36:55 +0000

The hits keep on coming. George MacDonald Fraser, creator of Harry Flashman, has died at the age of 82. If you haven’t read the adventures of Sir Harry Paget Flashman VC, KCB, KCIE, do it now. Start.

As I’ve said, it was Sir Daniel Darnley who led me to Esquemeling, and Conan Doyle to Froissart, Graves to Suetonius and Tacitus, Henry to Kinglake, Mayne Reid to Bancroft, the Wolf of Kabul to Kaye and Mallinson, and Sabatini to more than I can count. Yes, and Forever Amber to Macaulay, Pepys and Evelyn, and Gone With the Wind to Bruce Catton and Samuel Eliot Morison. Nor must I omit 1066 And All That, the best introduction to history ever written.

If this proves anything, it is that there is no truer guide to the past than good historical fiction. There is nothing phoney about it; while I tend to distrust approaches to education which suggest that it is an enjoyable game (when we know it is just hard slogging), the good costume novel is telling no more than the truth when it suggests that real history is fun and excitement and glamour and suspense; that it has all the ingredients of a great adventure story. But of course, that is what history is.

It does not matter if the historical novel is pure unashamed fiction, with plot and characters owing nothing to historic fact, so long as it is properly researched and reflects, as faithfully as the writer knows how, the period and its spirit. Better still, of course, to write what a Sabatini reviewer called ‘history disguised as fiction’ — that is, to take historic truth and present it as a story, weaving in whatever fictitious incidents and characters are needed to oil the narrative’s wheels, but never, never falsifying or distorting the truth on which it is based. Fairness above all, to the best of the writer’s ability; it isn’t always easy, but history and the reader deserve no less.

Sunday Reading for the Decadent

lapata — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 03:36:03 +0000

The time has come to take Sepoy to task with regard to his blanket condemnation of the New York Times. I am willing to cede the point that numerous op-ed writers for that newspaper of record often appear to lack even the most basic skills needed in making a logical argument. In the case of Maureen Dowd, of course, logical argument is not, it is hoped, even a goal. In her column, the formula of pegging every political figure and situation to a corresponding character in a widely viewed prime-time hit television show does not require logical argument, but only a fit of insinuating pique. What those who bewail the fall of quality reporting and argument in the pages of the editorials and international news at the Times need to understand is that in the newspaper produced by the most decadent city of a declining and falling empire, the best writing will not be found in those sections. While reading the book reviews yesterday, I was idly wondering why no one wrote so well nor so wittily as Noël Coward these days, when I happened to pick up the Style section. On the front cover was a story about a man named Andre J who was featured on the cover of French Vogue last month. While the topic did not interest me much, I noted that the author was one Guy Trebay, whose work I had previously admired in numerous articles, but especially in one about 24 hour gyms in Manhattan. The article was easily the best piece of writing in this Sunday’s paper, a 21st century profile written in the style of a 19th century romance, with magnificent sentences such as this:

And so it was that Andre J. — who had most recently been style-channeling Cher and compulsively Google-searching the late Detroit-born model and beauty and heroin addict Donyale Luna, and evolving his personal appearance to express what he thinks of as “a 60s, not mod, but mod-ish, and hippie look” that also contains elements of 1970s blaxploitation films — found his way to Mr. Weber’s compound by bus.

Guy Trebay would never be invited to write an op-ed column in the Times, nor would his byline grace the columns of the first section of any newspaper. He is an habitué of the style and leisure sections, yet the quality of his writing far exceeds anything to be found in those much more important parts of the paper, and his chronicling of the overstuffed decadence and glitz of his island habitat offers a much richer commentary on the state of the empire than any sordid little column by a Dowd or a Friedman, or heaven forbid, a Brooks. Guy Trebay would never call the world flat, or compare prime ministers of foreign nations fictional mafia dons or devote whole columns to baby names. It is perhaps emblematic of the blind and overstuffed quality of the so-called literati in our gilded age that the likes of the Gawker staff, a seemingly intended audience, are unable to notice Trebay’s style, and myopically read him for content alone. In closing, I leave you with this excerpt from a Trebayan gem, but one of many:

Shifts of taste and style are trivialities, of course, without any serious meaning. But they do perform one important function, as Proust pointed out: they notch our hours and moments and decades and leave us with visual mnemonics, clues by which to remember where and in which dress and what jeans (and wearing what cologne) one was at a particular time. Tracking the way styles evolve gives us insight, too, into the forms of beauty we choose to idealize.

Models who were vacant optimistic cheerleader types prevailed in the politically clueless 1970s (Christie Brinkley, Patti Hansen, Shelley Hack); brooding brunettes took over during the Age of Reagan (Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford and Yasmeen Ghauri); and off-kilter aristocratic types (Guinevere van Seenus, Stella Tennant, Erin O’Connor), emblematic of upper class women, came to the fore during the second Bush imperium.

What fashion now prefers as a beauty ideal is another type, the robot, personified by the stunning Raquel Zimmerman, a blond Brazilian of German heritage whose physical proportions are so symmetrical that many designers use her body as a template. That Ms. Zimmerman also has a kind of vacant cyborg aspect cannot be altogether incidental. Possibly this is the reason why Louis Vuitton hired her for a new ad campaign in which her face has been made up and manipulated so aggressively as to render her less humanly expressive than Lara Croft.

Was this intentional? Who knows? But it is no stretch to extrapolate from Ms. Zimmerman’s popularity to a time when live models will be dispensed with altogether, in favor of creatures written in CGI. That is not to suggest there is a master plan. There rarely is. Or is there?

Sunday Reading for Resistance

sepoy — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 22:59:19 +0000

Today, November 18th, 2007′s New York Time op-ed page is the absolute worst piece of printed tripe. ever. I know I haven’t read every op-ed page ever printed, but I am sure I can defend my assertion. Exhibit A: Shake, Rattle and Roll by Maureen Dowd. Exhibit B: Channeling Dick Cheney by Thomas Friedman. Exhibit C: Pakistan’s Collapse, Our Problem by Frederick Kagan and Michael O’Hanlon.
The particular insanities are beyond my capacity to explain without a healthy dosage of curses. On the bright side, next I ever hear any of my liberal colleagues tell me about NYT as the last bastion of hope, I know where to send them. Also, if any of my conservative colleagues needed a fair debunking of NYT’s liberal “bias”, I know where to send them too.
Avishai Margalit’s A Moral Witness to the ‘Intricate Machine’, in the NYRB deserves your attention. It is a review of David Shulman’s Dark Hope: Working for Peace in Israel and Palestine, a thought-provoking and powerful piece of writing that really resonated with me. David Shulman, the scholar, was already an admired figure but David Shulman, the activist, has a humanism and sense of duty that I can only aspire to. I have been meaning to review it since the summer and still have hopes.
Also in the NYRB is William Dalrymple’s The Most Magnificent Muslims – a review of three books on Mughals. I don’t share Dalrymple’s enthusiasm for Lal’s Domesticity and Power in the Early Mughal World but the review is worth a read for all.
Zizek’s Resistance is Surrender, in the LRB, is his slow steps towards a Gandhian alternative.

Sunday Reading for Bazaaris

sepoy — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 03:29:18 +0000

Thanks to my main man, Rajeev, we enjoyed a sunday afternoon at Soldier’s Field watching John Kitna decimate the Bears with his precision prayers. NFL is way more the carnival then any other sporting event – and perhaps much more taxing on the senses. Still, it seems though that watching a football game live is perhaps the only way to do it. My own national pastime, spotting Muhammad jerseys, was easily thwarted since apparently Urlacher jerseys are the only ones sold for legal tender. (Look for photos on my flickr site later).

The author has made a point of pre-emptive strikes at his supposed-critics or worse built up straw-critics for fiery putdowns. Sanjay Subrahmanyam on V. S. Naipul.
Malise Ruthven thinks about understanding Islam in the NYRB. Can I just note that not a single book, in that review, is actually written by a Muslim? Matter of fact, except for our friend Reza Aslan, I cannot think of any book by a believer put forth in any of our efforts to understand Islam. We insist on asking those who have rejected Islam or those who study Islam – critically.
At least, Xtianity has no problems with a resplendent critique. Nor capitalism. Oops.
“Doctorow is our Twain.”
Shopping in Qandahar seems fun until you pause to think that someone in the armed forces wants to buy all of Disney’s catalog. Or how we would never have bombed the Middle East, if bargaining was allowed in the Mall of America.
Speaking of Qandahar, if you haven’t seen Rick Shweder’s op-ed on anthropologists at war, you should. Of course, Shweder fails to point out American Anthropology has a rich tradition of helping carry out the unseemly task of imperialism – be it in the American West, in Africa or in the Pacific Islands. So what’s the fuss, now?
And lastly, at the heel of ‘islamofacism’ week, is a cogent reminder about labels from historian François Furstenberg in the NYT.

Documents of 1857

sepoy — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 22:43:46 +0000

Naim sahib has a scathing review in Outlook India of S.M. Azizuddin Husain’s 1857 Revisited/دستاويزاتِ غدر . The book is a compendium of 150 primary documents relating to the uprising and its aftermath, with translations and an introductory essay. A fine idea, in principle, but the problem, as Naim Sahib points out, is in the execution:

Reading most newly published Urdu and Persian books in India is a painful experience. This book, however, is worse than many. (Perhaps I should not blame only the editor for it. I know from my own experience that the people who compose Urdu books on computers do not like to be corrected, and unless one persists they let their errors stand.) Exasperated by endless errors of misreading and mistyping, I turned to the English translations, only to discover a greater horror. I had assumed it was a bilingual book, containing Urdu and Persian original texts, together with English translations. I was badly mistaken. The translations are by no means full; they are abridgments and summaries – another fact that Prof Husain fails to mention in his introduction. Worse still, the translations are often deliberately misleading.

Intrigued, I borrowed the book and took a look. As a resource for historians, the book is practically useless. (It may be best suited to, um, getting a sense of the archive?) There is no facsimile of the original documents; the translations are summaries, and in many instances, wrong. Worse still, some english “versions” of the documents are followed [sans distinction] with ‘gloss’ which borders on stream-of-consciousness and is often a gross reading of the primary text.

The introduction seems to want to pick up the gauntlet thrown by William Dalrymple’s Last Mughal about Indian historians using the National Archives and reading the shakista sources and writing histories better than those by Bayly et al. This clearly is not that work – nationalist pride, aside.

All is not lost. There are two things of potential interest to the historian which I am reproducing below the fold for the potential interest of said historians.

Archives for 1857 primary sources (p. 3):
1. National Archive of India, New Delhi and Bhopal
2. U.P. State Archives, Lucknow and Allahabad
3. Bihar State Archives, Patna
4. Madhya Pradesh State Archives, Bhopal
5. Punjab State Archives, Patiala
6. Haryana State Archives, Chandigarh
7. Rajasthan State Archives,Bikaner
8. National Library, Kolkata
9. Zakir Husain Library, Delhi
10. Azad Library, Aligarh
11. Natnagar Shodh Sansthan, Sitamau
12. Salar Jang Museum, Hyderabad
13. Delhi State Archives, Delhi
14. Commissioner’s Office, Mehrauli, Delhi
15. Khwaja Hasan Nizami Collection, Delhi
16. Mal Khanas of District Headquarters, such as Aligarh, Etawah, Agra, Bijnor, Fathpur, Muradabad, Meerut, Lucknow, Bulandshahr, Etah, Mathura, Barabanki, Sultanpur, Azamgarh, Badaun, Bareilly, Farrukhabad, Ghazipur, Jhansi, Jonpur, Lalitpur, Mirzapur, Muzaffarnagar, Saharanpur, Patna, Calcutta, Allahabad, Panipat, Mewat, Sonipat, Rohtak, Faridabad etc.
17. Roznamchas, Tazkiras, Diwans of contemporary Persian and Urdu Poets

Persian and Urdu sources on 1857, p. 198

1. Syed Kamaluddin Haider Hussaini, Kaiser al-Tawarikh
2. Najm al-Ghani Rampuri, Akhbar al-Zadid
3. Munshi Dibi Parshad Basas, Tazkirah Shu’ara-i Hunud
4. Anwar Ahmed Zuberi, Khutbat-i Aliya
5. Khalifa Muhammad Hasan Patialvi, Tarikh-i Khilafa
6. Jalaluddin Seoti, Tarikh-i Khilafa
7. Nusrat Ali Dehlavi, Nasr al-Akhbar
8. Abdullah Ashiq, Baharistan-i Awadh
9. Col. Sanderson Abbot, Tarikh Nadir al-Asr
10. Abdul Ghafoor Nasakh, Sukhun-i Shu’ara
11. Lala Sri Ram Dehlavi, Khum Khana Javaid
12. Niaz Ahmed Khan, Tarikh-i Rohail Khand
13. Ahmed Ali Khan Shauq, Tazkirah Kamalan-i Rampur
14. Amir Minai, Intikhab Yadgar
15. Munshi Naulakshur, Awadh Akhbar, 14th May 1872 and Guldasta-i Sukhun
16. Zaheer Dehlavi, Dastan-i Ghadar
17. Malik Ram, Tilamzah Ghalib
18. Qadar Baksh Sabar Dehlavi, Gulistan Sukhun
19. Syed Muhsin Ali, Sirapa Sukhun
20. Imdad Sabri, Tarikh-i Jurm o Saza and 1857 kay Ghadar Shu’ara
21. Hasan Nizami Dehlavi, Muqadimah Bahadar Shah
22. Syed Ali Hasan Bhopali, Subh-i Gulshan
23. Mohd. Abdul Shahid Khan Sherwani, Baghi Hindustan
24. Khawaja Mohd. Bashir, Ghadar key Halat o Fatuhat Ingrezi
25. Rahi Mas’um Raza, 1857, Allahabad 1960
26. Syed Ashur Kazmi, 1857 kay Ghadarun kay Khutut
27. Ghulam Rasul Mahr, 1857 kay Mujahid
28. Anis Fatima Barelvi, 1857 kay Hero, Karachi 1993
29. Chandar Krishna, Ghadar, 1967
30. Sadiq Hussain Sirdhunvi, Ghadar, Delhi
31. Nasir Lahori, Ghadar Leader, Lahore 1937
32. Ghadar Delhi kay Akhbar, Delhi 1920
33. Ziauddin Ahmed Barni, Ghadr ki Subh o Sham, Delhi 1932
34. Hasan Nizami, Ghadr Delhi kay Afsanay, Delhi 1918 and Ghadr ka Nateeja, Delhi 1930
35. Rashid al-Kheri, Ghadr ki Mari Shehzadian, Delhi
36. Intizamullah Shahbani, Ghadr kay chand ulema, Delhi
37. Zafar Taban, Ghadr kay Manazir, 1935
38. Kunhya Lal, Tarikh-i Baghawat-i Hind

Pragati

sepoy — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 13:13:22 +0000

I have a small piece in this month’s issue of Pragati: The Indian National Interest Review on, well, Pakistan. I wasn’t able to spend much time on this piece so I am unsure if it meets the standards of the journal.

You can download the issue and circulate it around.

I should also congratulate Nitin Pai on a fine e-publication – which I should say has better production value than many a print-based circulations. Much to emulate here for both the scholarly and the policy community.

Porter on Decolonization

sepoy — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 21:42:24 +0000

In the Aug 2, 2007 issue of LRB, Bernard Porter had a review essay, Trying to Make Decolonisation Look Good, covering Ronald Hyam’s Britain’s Declining Empire: The Road to Decolonisation, 1918-68, Peter Clarke’s The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire and Sir Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper’s Forgotten Wars: The End of Britain’s Asian Empire. The review is behind LRB’s subscription wall but dear friend J. sent me a pdf.

I highly recommend it – both for its broad historical summary of the political attitudes in Britain about ending the empire and for the very pointed critiques of historiography [including his own culpability]. In the interest of my fellow SAists, I am posting, at least the first third of the essay below the fold which deals more broadly with the subject of the end of the British Empire after WWII and his conclusion which is, of course, of particular interest to all of those witnessing the throes of the American empire in Iraq. The couple of footnotes are mine – with some small nitpicks.

Gosh, how civilised it was. ‘At last, without convulsion, without tremor and without agony, the great ship goes down.’ The ‘great ship’ was the British Empire; the words are those of the imperial historian Jack Gallagher. Noel Annan believed that the ‘peaceful divestment of the empire’ was ‘the most successful political achievement of Our Age’. The main actors on the British side all came out of it pretty chuffed, too. They must have been encouraged in this feeling by the crowds that cheered Lord Mountbatten on India’s Independence night, 14-15 August 1947, and unharnessed the horses from his vice-regal coach to drag it around New Delhi themselves, to the amazement of one journalist: it was as if ‘this nation had become more pro-British than it had ever been since the British came.’ That was immensely gratifying; especially as making their ex-subjects more pro-British was one of the primary aims of the decolonisation strategy, from the moment the empire’s days were seen to be numbered, which was quite early on.

Well, there is something in this – the ‘euthanasia’ scenario, as Ronald Hyam calls it. It is true that most British politicians, and even colonial servants, quickly came round to ‘accepting the inevitable pleasantly’, as Attlee wished them to. They even accepted that the inevitable was likely to come sooner than they originally anticipated or might have liked. If asked to choose, they thought that ‘in the long run giving too much and too soon will prove to be wiser than giving too little and too late’ (Lord Soulbury). That was why there was as little ‘convulsion’ as there was. Many transfers were peaceful and orderly. In Britain, very few people seemed at all fazed by the process, aside from the usual suspects: ‘Empire Loyalists’, old Tory backwoodsmen and young Tory backwoodspeople like Enoch Powell, whose idiosyncratic response to the loss of his beloved India was to erase the empire from his memory, quite literally. (He later argued that it had never existed.) Even Churchill, Hyam claims, was not really interested in the empire, except as a rhetorical device; certainly by comparison with the far more portentous international issues that emerged in the 1950s – the Cold War, the nuclear bomb and so on.

Some people professed to see decolonisation as the culmination of British imperialism, rather than as a reverse; the ‘logical conclusion’, as Hyam puts it, ‘of the policy of successive governments’, going back possibly to 1839 and the Durham Report on Canada. It was Macaulay who, around that time, said that if the British idea of ‘liberty’ took such a hold in India as to lead it to seize the country for itself, this would be ‘the proudest day in English history’. ‘The transfer of power,’ the Colonial Office proclaimed in 1950, ‘is not a sign of weakness or of liquidation of the Empire, but is, in fact, a sign and source of strength.’ Obviously, the Commonwealth, on which many liberal-imperialist hopes were still pinned, was a comfort here. So was Harold Wilson’s idea (later taken up by Tony Blair) that Britain’s past imperial experience gave her unique tools and skills that could still be used to solve world problems; Britain was said to possess cultural sensitivities, for example, that the US conspicuously lacked. Attlee, too, thought the Americans could learn from Britain on matters of race. Macmillan had the idea that the British might continue to rule through the Americans, like the Greeks in the later Roman Empire: ‘They ran it because they were so much cleverer than the Romans, but they never told the Romans this.’ (That is in Peter Clarke’s book.) He won’t have been serious; but the levity of the remark suggests that the fall of the empire wasn’t upsetting him too much.

The inevitability of the end of empire was accepted mainly because it was so blindingly obvious to all save the most abject blimps. (They may have included some leading politicians – Churchill initially, and Ernest Bevin.) The disparity between Britain’s postwar situation and her colonial responsibilities was just too huge. Hyam spends some time debating which was the key factor: colonial nationalism, economic constraints, lack of ‘will’ to carry on or international pressures (US, USSR, the UN), before settling on the last of these. In general, he is dismissive of the colonial nationalist contribution. ‘The important question perhaps,’ he suggests, ‘is how the British government arrived at the point where they were prepared to open the door to whoever knocked.’ Well, perhaps they had always been at that point. Another way of looking at it is that the empire had been ‘overstretched’ for a long time: run on a shoestring and with very few personnel, inadequately defended by a second-rate military, and with little domestic commitment to it, especially if it involved sustained repression. Its eventual collapse should thus come as no surprise. (Hyam puts the beginning of the end in 1918. I’d go back even further.) All it needed – all it would have needed at almost any time in the previous hundred years – was a serious ‘Western’ challenge, and a wholesale withdrawal¹ of the indigenous collaboration that had helped sustain the empire: that, rather than Britain’s subjects actually ganging up against her (though they did that too). Imperialists, who were by and large a gloomy bunch, had warned of this for decades, and this may be why they rolled over so easily.

It is also why Britain started concentrating, perhaps earlier than other nations, on the essential task that remained: not resisting decolonisation, but making it look good. There were several aspects to this. First, they needed to get something out of it: ‘informal’ ties, like trade and defence treaties, to replace the old ones, and the continuing goodwill of their former subjects, if only to prevent them turning to Moscow or Beijing. (The Cold War was a vital part of the context here.) Second, they had to avoid the impression of ‘scuttle’, of abandoning their responsibilities at the first sign of difficulty: a charge that was constantly levelled at Labour governments by the Conservatives, including Churchill (rhetorically). (In fact, in power the Tories proved equally scuttly – an indication, perhaps, of how inexorable the trend was.) They needed to persuade people they were in control of the process; to which end it would help enormously if they could argue that it, or something very like it, had been intended all long. It was here that the traditions going back at least as far as Macaulay of devolution to ‘white’ colonies, and ‘trusteeship’ in the others – the latter a genuine strain in British colonial policy, if sometimes a rather tenuous one – came in useful. But they also presented a problem. If Britain had been planning for this all along – if her imperialism really was fundamentally a nurturing, educative process, as the ‘trust’ trope implied – then there should have been something to show for it by the 1950s and 1960s, to justify the judgment that these countries were now ‘mature’ enough to be given ‘latch-keys, bank accounts and shotguns’. (These were the words notoriously used by Herbert Morrison when he rejected the idea of self-government for some colonies in 1943: it would be like giving these things, he said, to ‘a child of ten’.) Britain needed to have completed the job.

But that emphatically wasn’t the situation in most colonial territories. Before 1938, and excepting South Asia, ‘Britain’s colonial record’ in the fields of economic and political development ‘can only be described as deplorable’ (Hyam). This was partly because the people in charge believed they had far more time than turned out to be the case, though it is difficult to see many signs of planning for independence even in the long term. It would take a mammoth effort to catch up. In 1938 some urgency began to be injected by a new colonial secretary, Malcolm MacDonald. ‘It is in my view imperative that, at a time when the “colonial question” is being ventilated at home and abroad,’ he wrote, ‘we should ourselves be as far as possible above reproach.’ He had a considerable effect. But it was not enough. Almost none of the nations that emerged from the decolonisation process in the 1950s and 1960s could be convincingly presented as having been adequately ‘prepared’. (Malaya and Singapore were an exception, partly because of their front-line position in the fight against Communism, which gave Britain a little more time, backed by the US.) Towards the end, Britain was letting some extraordinary regimes take over: Swaziland, for example, was run by a king who disliked elections on the grounds that they only bred subversives and other ‘hyenas urinating upwind to stampede the cattle below’.

There are other difficulties with the ‘great ship going down’ view. It may have been a matter of ‘euthanasia’ for the mother empire; but it was far less painless for the ‘children’ whose births were killing her – many of them premature, unhappy (after that first intoxicating breath of freedom) and malformed. Most of the malformations can be directly attributed to imperialism: the artificial boundaries between ethnic groups, for example; the agricultural monocultures encouraged (or forced) with an imperial economy in mind; and the waves of immigration that independent peoples might have put a stop to. (Jews into Palestine is the obvious example; though Hyam and Clarke place a lot of the blame for that on Truman, and both wax indignant over America’s hypocrisy here, in insisting that Britain admit more refugees into Palestine while adopting rigid quotas itself.) In some ways the British outlook on the religious and racial issues that were involved can be admired. One of the virtues of the British Empire and Commonwealth, its idealists claimed, was its racial inclusiveness; which is why Britain did not object – was, rather, relieved – when apartheid South Africa left the club in 1961. The Commonwealth, Lord Home wrote to Macmillan just before this happened, ‘would undoubtedly be happier and closer-knit were the ugly duckling out of the nest’. (He had obviously forgotten the dénouement of the story of the ugly duckling.) Many late imperial ‘mistakes’ were due to an underestimation of national, ethnic and religious loyalties, which were probably bound to count for more when the imperial umpire was removed. South-East Asia was a vivid racial mix while Britain was dominating all races, but could be a bloody one when all those races had to jockey for position. This was why Britain was so reluctant to partition first India and then Palestine; waxed so lyrically about ‘multiculturalism’; and devised all those plans for ‘partnership’ – the buzzword of the 1960s – between blacks, whites and Indians in east central Africa, which in the end came to nothing. Of course, there was a cynical element to the last of these. Hyam calls talk of ‘partnership’ in the ill-fated Central African Federation, for example, ‘a fraud’. On the other hand, there is undoubtedly something touchingly idealistic about the notion of black and white, Jews and Arabs, Muslims and Hindus, Chinese and Malays, Shias and Sunnis, Latvians and Russians (and so on) living together in amity; and a sadness in the thought that the only way to guarantee this in certain circumstances might be under an imperial yoke. ²

……….

British imperialists, however, did tend to idealise. This is evident in many of the official documents that form the basis of Hyam’s fine study (some of it recycled from volumes of these documents which he edited), and inevitably colour his perspective too. Most Whitehall officials – with all their faults, the worst probably their tendency to patronise – were good and well-intentioned men (nearly always men, of course), sympathetic, undogmatic and with a broader, more philosophical view of both the world and the future than, for example, the political diarists on whom Peter Clarke mainly bases his study.

This doesn’t alter the fact that decolonisation did go surprisingly smoothly, for Britain; especially with the gloss that was put on it at the time. This was Britain’s major success: to persuade its own people, at least, that it was so much more civilised when it came to shedding colonies than, for example, France in Algeria (despite Kenya), and less obstinate than Portugal (in spite of Rhodesia). In fact, the process was usually messy, often bloody, and very rarely in Britain’s control. This belied the quite genuine ‘trusteeship’ instincts and ambitions of the top colonial officials in Whitehall and sowed the seeds of trouble thereafter. ‘Nowhere down the length of the [South-East Asian] crescent,’ Bayly and Harper conclude, ‘did relinquished or devolved British authority pass quietly into the hands of homogeneous nation-states. The divisions of colonial politics were to scarify the region for two generations.’ People should reflect on this, before feeling too much nostalgia for the British Empire, or setting it up as a model for America today. It’s a risky business, taking on an imperial mission with a view to leaving something good behind.

That was always Britain’s rationale, the thing that supposedly distinguished its empire (like its successor, the American empire) from most previous ones, and which should disqualify the argument that you sometimes find being made in support of it, that ‘things were better under it than they are now.’ Of course, this wasn’t the major motive of most British imperialists, which is one reason their empire didn’t on the whole turn out like that. A second is that it was, and always had been, far too weak and flawed for its (supposed) liberal purpose: maintained largely through bluff, collaboration and occasional brutality (especially when its legitimacy was questioned, which is the reason atrocities built up in those final days); constantly having to trim, compromise and ‘appease’ in order to avoid crises; run on the cheap by a minimal staff whose altruistic dedication (in very many instances) never quite outweighed their lack of imagination, illiberalism and rough, racist edges; and hardly supported at all by the mass of the population in Britain, unless they could be persuaded that it was a wholly altruistic venture, and hence emphatically not when they went out as soldiers to India or Burma (as Captain Bogarde did) and saw what it was really like on the ground. You need much more than this to establish liberal successor states that will do you proud. No empire has ever succeeded in doing much better than merely keeping things going. India, Malaya and Singapore may be the nearest Britain got to this, the first chiefly by its own efforts and the others mainly because by the 1950s liberal (or liberalish) imperialism was the only sort Britain had left. (Even so, both still have some damaging postcolonial legacies.) Seen from this perspective decolonisation was a damn disaster. That must affect our judgment of the British Empire itself. Even if things had been better under it, which is arguable, it wouldn’t justify an imperialism whose aspirations were so much higher.

———

This reminds me of the apocryphal (I think..) statement from Gandhi about “100,000 Englishmen simply cannot control 350 million Indians if those Indians refuse to cooperate” because it sets up a bizarre logical world. If, as Porter has argued in his own work, so few of Britain’s citizen had to agree to sustain an empire than why the necessity that every single Indian must disagree for the empire to fail?
I think that’s stretching it a bit – in many directions: One can easily argue against the notion that these categories, Hindus, Muslims, Shia, Sunni are inherently confrontational or historically uniform – and many have argued that at least they are even products of colonialism itself and that the differences – such as they are – are actually a result of imperial rule itself.

Sunday Reading for the Gods

sepoy — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 21:31:39 +0000

The ICC World Twenty20 is currently underway in South Africa. It is exciting and exhilarating and droves of fans are watching this most amazing and necessary rejuvenating elixir pumped into the staid, old, decrepit body of Cricket. Or so they tell me. I really cannot be bothered. Apparently the India-Pakistan match ended in a tie which is resolved with a “bowl-out”. A bowl-out. India won the match “3-0″. ˈdəbəlˌyoō. tē. ef.

A lot of my cricket playing happened in the short-form [25 overs a side] and we never had a bowl-out. A bowl-out sounds like some type of TV-producer inspired madness – oh wait, the ICC rules clearly state that “the host television broadcaster shall be consulted as to which end of the ground the bowlers should bowl from”. Ye Gods. Bring on the cheerleaders.

At some point, I will like to read and review Lilla’s The Still-Born God. Until then, you can see what NYT’s Goldstein thinks of it. Judging from the excerpt, I am disinclined to take kindly to Lilla’s claim of exceptionalism – in regards to both the American experience of God and politics and the Islamic world in general.
Another review worth reading is Megan Marshall’s A Life Less Ordinary on Linda Colley’s The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History: “The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh” is a dazzling performance of historical scholarship that reveals just enough of what Colley describes in her acknowledgments as “the ordeal of tracking Elizabeth Marsh” to allow readers the sense that they too are on the trail of this compulsively itinerant woman.”
Ian Buruma, in the NYRB, reviews the papa neocon’s latest, “me, why would they listen to you?
Sanjay Subrahmanyam is in the LRB, reviewing a couple of recent books that look delightfully snark-worthy. I don’t know what he says, because I don’t have a subscription. If anyone does, do send me a pdf. And if you do, also send me the essay done by Bernard Porter a few weeks back in the LRB. Good deal? Also in LRB is Perry Anderson’s Depicting Europe – which you can, and should, read.
Any CM readers want to do a book club on David Leavitt’s The Indian Clerk? Maybe Bloomsbury USA can throw a couple of review copies our way? eh?
Chicago has played host to the annual ISNA (Islamic Society of North America) forever but I have never attended. But after reading Samaha’s accounts – I especially recommend Invasion of the ISNA Deaniacs – maybe, I should have gone this year.
And finally, Bill O’Reilly is making sense of it all.

Down to The Wire I

sepoy — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 17:16:19 +0000

Also see, David Simon in The Believer [via kottke]

حرام

sepoy — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 05:12:55 +0000

۱) فيض

تمەيں کەو رند و محتسب ميں اج شب کون فرق ايسا
يە ا کە بيٹهے ەيں ميکدە ميں وە اٹھ کە اۓ ەيں ميکدە سے

۲) فيض

اج تک شيخ کے اکارام ميں جو شۓ تهي حرام
اب وەي دشمنِ دين راحتِ جان ٹەري ەے

۳) حافظ

می خور که شیخ و حافظ و مفتی و محتسب
چون نیک بنگری ، همه تزویر می کنند

۴) عطار

ره ميخانه و مسجد كدام است
كه هر دو بر من مسكين حرام است
نه در مسجد گذارندم كه رند است
نه در ميخانه كاين خمار خام است
مرا كعبه خرابات است امروز
حريفم قاضى و ساقى امام است

Sunday Reading for Post-Partitioners

sepoy — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 16:42:40 +0000

Ah, the second week in August, when every wizened old editor’s attention turns to the “Partition of 1947″. Thoughtful pieces are commissioned on the violence of Partition, the communalism that brought about the horrible violence of Partition and the horrendous culpability of the British in bringing about the terrible violence of Partition (to add some topicality, Fred Kaplan unhinges about Iraq and India, this year). It does appear, to the casual reader of news in these here United States, that the only thing worth telling about South Asian history is that decade in the 40s and the communal killings.

Pankaj Mishra leads the pack with a rather starchy and frustrating article in the NYer, Exit Wounds. I can overlook that preciously Marie-Antoinettesque opening. I can even ignore that he faithfully reproduces the post-imperial narrative which robs Indians – any of them – of all their agency (Independence happened because Britain was weakened and US put pressure. Killings happened because British fueled separatism). But I just cannot let go of his conclusion which as usual ignores history and reduces analysis to simply spotting every recursion of the word “Islam” and then connecting the dots.¹ More Mishra & Mishra & Mishra.
A random story about change and growth in Pakistan since 1947: The House of Kazmi
Khushwant Singh has a list of the dozen most significant novels ~~about India~~ by authors of Indian origins in the past 60 years. Jhumpa Lahiri?
I couldn’t agree more with Ahmed Rashid’s Musharraf’s State of Emergency. You can see my agreements down below or in my unpublished op-ed, Getting Pakistan Right.
Abir informed me about Jashn-e Azadi – a documentary by Sanjay Kak about Kashmir. I am curious to see the documentary and judging from the comments on the blog, there is a pretty harsh reaction to it from our beloved nationalists.
And finally, I link to this map, Terrorism on the Rise, not to make any political point but to highlight what Edward Tufte would herald as “beautiful evidence”. I am a design geek. Yes. In fact, I am such a geek that this NYT article on Highway sign typography is the best thing I have read in weeks.
update: William Dalrymple’s got Pakistan’s back.

Things will be slow and low on the CM front. Enjoy the dog days of summer.

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“Meeting Mountbatten a few months after partition, Churchill assailed him for helping Britain’s “enemies,” “Hindustan,” against “Britain’s friends,” the Muslims. Little did Churchill know that his expedient boosting of political Islam would eventually unleash a global jihad engulfing even distant New York and London. The rival nationalisms and politicized religions the British Empire brought into being now clash in an enlarged geopolitical arena; and the human costs of imperial overreaching seem unlikely to attain a final tally for many more decades.”